When to Start that Prep

When should you start prepping for college? There is always that question in a teen’s head of when should I start preparing for college? Am I starting too early or am I starting too late? From a young age, there is this pressure around figuring out what you want to do with your life, especially from our parents. As a child when asked what you want to be in the future you usually give a very generic answer of either doctor, firefighter, or astronaut but none of those are what you end up being in the future. When thinking about your future, there are both pros and cons when thinking about it too early and too late in life. Figuring out what you want to do in life at a young age gives you a lot more time to think it over but it also gives you a lot more stress than you need at that age. Figuring out what you want to do later in life also creates a lot of stress but it also gives you a lot of time to actually figure out what you want to do with your life and what you enjoy.

Think back to the first time a teacher ever asked you about what your plans after school were, the first thought that went through your mind was probably college or some other type of school. At a young age college is something that is ingrained in are brain something we feel like we have to do. When you figure out what you want to do in the future at a young age, those planes are more likely to change than they would when you figure it out later. At a young age you are less likely to really know what you love. When I was younger I used to tell people I wanted to be a mechanic because that’s what my grandfather was and at the time I really looked up to him but in actuality that’s not what I really wanted to do. The next thing I told people I wanted to be was a cosmetologist because that was something I really enjoyed at the time but now that I’m a senior in high school that isn’t what I want to do no plan now is to go to college for music. My plans for after school probably never have happened if I had figured out my after-school plans at a younger age. If I had figured out what I wanted to do with my life at a younger age I might have been stuck doing something with my life that I really didn’t like and would make me miserable.

The longer we wait to figure out our school plans the more stressed we get. When going into my senior year I knew exactly what I wanted to do and what colleges I was going to apply to, but just because I had that all figured out doesn’t mean I wasn’t stressed as well. Because I had my college plans figured out I was able to get my college application in in time for early admissions but I still had to wait for acceptance to come back before I could do any of my music auditions and the sucky part about that was I then didn’t get them in until last minute. The longer you wait to figure out your college plans the less time you have to get things done and the less likely you are to get college applications in before early admissions if that is what you are planning to do. The longer it takes you to figure out your future plans, the more likely it is for your parents to be all over and that just adds more stress to the an already stressful situation. every year in high school the main thought in are head is what am I going to do when I’m done here. Every year teachers and parents push us to explore new colleges and life options teachers are always pushing the idea of college down are throats making us feel like that is the only option available like we can’t get any where in life if we don’t go. The longer we wait to do our school prep the more nagging we get from teachers and parents which adds more stress to an already stressful situation which is something we don’t need.

No matter when you start prepping for college there are always challenges that are going to come along. There is never going to be a way to avoid the stress of after school but there will always be ways for you to deal with it, you just have to figure out how to do that in your own way whether that be prepping for college and life now or waiting a little bit longer.

“Scranton Pennsylvania – Lackawanna College – Entrance – Historic” by Onasill – Bill Badzo – 149 Million Views – Thank Y is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.