“Choices, Choices…”

Two of these three are in the total control of the student, but no one seems to be as concerned with these decisions as with the middle one.

Perhaps that’s human nature; after all, if we can control something, then I suppose it wouldn’t stress us out. But I would argue that the 1st and 3rd decisions are, in fact, far more important in the long term than the 2nd decision. In fact, in my nearly twenty years of doing this, the most stress I see has had to do with the 3rd decision.

This angst is what I have realized is the Law of Unintended Consequences at work. We in the HRA college counseling office advocate a thoughtful, fit-driven college search and application process for our students. We want them to pick a few colleges of differing selectivity where they think they will thrive based on factors like “size” and “location” (“location” can be further distilled to “urban” or “rural” as well as a particular region of the country). And they do! The result is that they have a number of schools that they really like from which to choose, and that can prove to be stressful.

And yet, ask any student or parent at the beginning of the process, and chances are that they are more anxious than excited. And that’s really too bad, because I would like to think of this process as a time of great excitement and promise rather than stress and worry.

So why do we do this to ourselves? Is it true what Groucho Marx once said—that no one wants to be a member at a club that would have them as a member? Why do we so desperately want what we can’t have? If we do want what we can’t have, what kind of evolutionary glitch is that?

If our ancestors chose not to marry because they couldn’t have the “one” they desperately longed for (and most everyone has had this experience, I’d wager), then we wouldn’t be here to suffer our own bouts of unrequited love (which, as I will explain in a later post, is kind of a handy thing to have experienced!).

My point is that there’s hardly anyone walking the earth who hasn’t been told “no” at some seemingly seismic moment in their youth and gone on to live a life of profound happiness. Anyone over thirty can confirm this, and we all know better than to think that where we were or weren’t invited to spend our undergraduate years have left some indelible mark on us.

So help our children understand and revel in their power of the application process.

Not their powerlessness.

I’d love to hear your thoughts!