Sometimes it's really depressing to fill out applications. I'm applying for an NIAF scholarship, and the application asked about my SAT scores, my GPA, my expected graduation date, my job history, etc. One of the essays was also about my career plans. It's always painful for me to think about what I want to do in the future, because I still don't know. I usually like to just look ahead a year or so for those immediate concerns, but I don't want to plan out or even think about planning out what I'm going to be doing in 20 or 15 years, or even 5 years.

Not only that, but filling out an application reminds me about the impending real world that's soon going to swat me in the face. Of course, I can put it off another few years by pursuing a graduate degree, but that's only a temporary countermeasure. I've basically been in school since I was three, if you count preschool. That's what, 16 out of my 19 accumulated years that I've been in school? School is all I can ever remember, and it will be a shock to break from it. (Speaking of being 19, it's always very sobering when your age's tens digit is ready to tick up one, even if it's only the second time it's ever done that.)

For me, it's very scary that in about a year I'm going to be graduating from Stanford. I'm having to think about taking standardized tests again in preparation for applying to graduate schools (GRE exam), and I have to think about the schools to which I want to apply. How scary is that? It's college applications all over again!

Sometimes in thinking about this, I realize that maybe I'm biting off more than I can chew what with all this academic stuff that I'm piling on top of myself (two majors, minor, honors thesis, going abroad). Am I concentrating on the wrong things in college and getting into too much work so I can't enjoy the people and the events here at college? Is that why maybe I don't do stuff with the same people each year?

Stepping back, though, I come to the conclusion that I've definitely become more social than in high school, and I'm definitely glad about that. I'm probably just worrying too much about the future. I can't say that I've become a wreck or anything; I've managed to juggle my enormous amount of classes and my social life pretty well, I think, and that's definitely a good thing.

I'd just rather stay at Stanford for another 4 years as an undergraduate, and THEN think about applying to graduate school. There's so much else to learn about -- I would like to have time to take some Japanese language, some architecture, some political science; I know there are some other fields that I forgot in which I'd at least like to take a few introductory classes. Meh, time's so fleeting and so short. It's not fair!

Wah.

Well, I'll leave you all with this. Hope you like it!