The Start of No Return

13 October 2011Annie L

“How hard can it be?” The thoughtless question is counter attacked by the endless scrambles and final edits of what seems to be organized chaos. Applications, program selections, deadlines, deadlines and more deadlines.

For a moment you lose your train of thought, thinking back to the simpler days of preschool coloring books and perhaps even conjugating past, present and future tenses in French class with Mr. Healy. Instead, you’re seated at a desk with your laptop perched in front of you, mocking and jeering as a blank document remains despairingly wordless. Each couple of sentences you manage to type down are swiftly deleted and you’re frantic, for anything, as long as it’s submitted on time.

Then arrives the weekly e-mail that mentions the upcoming university meetings and your heart leaps as it recognizes some. No, it does not bound gleefully, it’s swallowed and regurgitated in nervous excitement. It’s quite worrisome actually. October 15th is sneaking up and the United Kingdom applications are being sent in. There are no ‘take backs’ and late applications will not be accepted. Why should they be?

Upon hitting the ‘complete application’ or ‘send’ button, all that can be done, has been. What awaits you in a long period of silence before that fateful day arrives and, as Taryn O mentioned earlier in her “You’ve Got Mail!” blog, that promising X stands solitarily and ominously beside your name, bold and brilliant. Sometimes foreign and in juxtaposition. You can only hope that the reply in your letter do not reflect the symbolic meaning of the X, but rather a sincere check mark.

Stop. Put down the university pamphlets, close your laptop, drop the pencils. Consider this: your opportunities are limitless. We, as Brentwood students, as scholars of the world —where knowledge is a book or link away — are the luckiest. Good fortune is in our favour. It does not matter what others may think about which university you’re attending or how expensive it may be. Whether it be rain, snow or shine, choose where you want to go based on the environment you want to enrich yourself in. For, “wherever you go, go with all your heart” (Confucius) and it will not lead you astray.

Where Students Choose To Be