I'm lonely. I've been lonely all week. I was going to post earlier in the week, but I've also been kind of swamped with life and school work. As the only one of my close friends to stay at home for college, I felt kind of left behind. My school has two boys in every three people, which I didn't mind, but now I'm realizing that this poses a difficulty for me in making girl friends at college. It's making me sad, and I don't like it.
I said in my first post that, if it was up to me, I probably wouldn't be enrolled in college right now, and I've been meaning to elaborate on that point. Last year, things seemed good. Being a smart girl with good SAT scores, I was told I would have my pick of schools; I could go anywhere I wanted. So, I applied to a few very big-name schools, two of which had sent me a lot of promotional mail: University of Chicago, George Washington University (these two sent me the mail), and Cornell University. Now, I said I had good SAT scores, but they weren't perfect. I was about on par with the average at at least GWU, but still, in this day and age, it seems like you need to be a lot more above average than I was if you want to go to places that I'd dreamed about. I applied in the end of November, then sat down for the nail-biting three and a half month wait. As winter went on and my friends began getting into dream schools, I got more and more nervous for the months ahead. Then one afternoon in early March, I got my first disheartening online rejection letter, I think from GWU, and then shortly after from U of Chicago. I then convinced myself that while I had been excited about those schools, I could live without them, and hey, maybe I could still get into Cornell. As the next two or three weeks went on, I built my hopes higher and higher for Cornell. Finally, on judgement day, I got that same short rejection email, and I broke. That was one long night. I cried for hours, and my spirit really just broke. I talked with my dad for hours about my hurt as a future I'd felt was promised to me disappeared, right in front of me.
The real problem of the situation was that it was two or three days until April 1, and I had no options at all. With my three dreams gone, I had to come up with a new plan for whole future in just a couple of weeks. I whipped up a couple applications for cheaper, closer schools and sent them out a week or two later, then I waited again. It turned out that, for the college I'd considered away from home, there were two colleges with similar names in one town, and I had applied to the wrong one. While there might have been time to reapply for admission, the housing would be relatively nil at this point, so I gave up on the idea of leaving home. However, finally, I got a positive reply. The local college, a branch of Penn State University, had accepted me right off the bat. Finally, I had an option, even if it was nothing like I'd planned or dreamed of.
However, now, with my spirit beaten and bruised, I now wasn't sure of the institution at all. On that night in March, my dad had told me to figure out what I really want for myself and to do it. He provided the option of my staying home from anything and just working and saving up my money for a while, then buying some means of travel, like a sailboat, and traveling the world self-sufficiently. Even now, this dream sounds amazing. However, on the other side of my decision was my mother, who is really the reason I'm in college right now. She insisted that I at least begin college somewhere cheap, like at home, and just live a home to keep costs down while I studied a variety of things and tried to figure out where my heart lay. My dad agreed with this as being a good idea, and so it happened that I sent in my deposit and now I'm in school with a major in Environmental Science and a minor in Spanish.
The only thing about this whole plan, is that, this past summer, I was barely home and so didn't work much and had just barely enough money saved up to get me through the year. I'm working on the weekends now just to keep up with life, and even though I'm living at home and have scholarships, there is still $3000 a year that I don't have covered. My first semester was free to me because of some money saved up over my life by my parents, but, write one single check and there it goes! Life is so expensive, it's insane. I don't even have enough money now to get me through my year because of a change in cell phone plans and some unforeseen expenses with school. My dreams of study abroad over spring break or even in my fourth semester seem bleak at the moment, which just kills me, because those are really my truest dream.
Here at home, my family doesn't quite understand my predicaments, and literally every member is so busy with high school or extra college that we barely do anything like we used to. I hate it, I miss the simple nights. Also, I hang out with a few friends from high school while a college, but they're boys or people that I was never super close with. I really am an outgoing person, but it's seemed like everyone already knew each other or didn't really want to become close with me, so I'm alone a lot of the time at school. Which is really hard, because I tend to internalize things normally when I have close friends around me.
Well, time to do some studying so that I actually can pass the biology test I don't care about on Monday (my apathy is bad because this class is required for my major...). I need to get my rear in gear and clean up my schedule and my rooms and my head so that I can figure myself out a bit. I am trying, it's just hard is all. Well, good luck to you in your weekends!
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