Sure, I've hung out by the huge wall of college brochures tons of times before, but who would of thought that I would ever actually have to enter the college counselor's lair?

    Our school college counselor has this mandatory meeting that he sets up with every single junior during their spring semester. He sent out an email back in February, and most of my classmates disappeared into his office sometime in March, but I've been putting it off. I guess it's some unconscious fear in me, a little kid that doesn't want to enter that scary realm of rejection letters and application fees, checking your mail twice a day when March rolls around, and feeling that painful twang in your chest when a friend gets into your "top choice", which had only earlier this week sent you a letter saying in the nicest way possible that you're just "not exactly what they're looking for."

    Well, the year was ending in five days, and I couldn't put it off forever... and besides, my mom was getting pretty on my back about it, so I finally made the step and set up a meeting for last Friday. 

    He pretty much sat me in a seat and asked me questions. That was the whole thing. He asked me if I wanted a big or little school. Suburban or urban. Coed or single-sex. East coast or West. Public or Private. Religious? Liberal? Two year or four? Interested in studies...

    I took the SATs this morning, and surprisingly enough, it really wasn't too painful. Well, except for the fact that you have to spend four agonizing hours in a small room with thirty strangers, of course.

    The test itself really wasn't too challenging: it was a lot of common sense, relatively basic vocabulary words and some math problems. Don't get me wrong- there were definitely a good amount of questions that left me absolutely stumped, but for the most part I felt pretty confident about my ability to answer the questions. I was expecting it to be harder, actually. As a high school student, you hear lots of accounts of SAT experiences, from all kinds of people. As time went by, I couldn't help but internalize that I have to do well because good SAT scores are the "key" to getting in to a good college. This notion, however,  slowly got erased from my mind over the years as I read about all the ridiculous cases in which colleges had to turn away some kids with perfect 2400s because there were simply too many of them and the schools wanted to maintain "some diversity". With so many kids getting perfect scores, how can you keep up? You may get a really good score, say in the 2200 range, but it still won't compare! Are you supposed to just quit while you're ahead, or what?   

    Knowing the crazy competition, I got kind of freaked out when I looked at my...