Hello! From Erica the Senior

"Finally," I thought to myself, as I stepped onto my high school campus on the first day of school. It was the last time I would be stepping on this campus with fresh thoughts of attending classes and eating lunch with my dearest friends. It has been a few months passed since the first day of school - well, to be exact seven months, and senior year is definitely not what I expected.

The first week of school was relaxing. I went to school everyday, smiled at the teachers, talked to my friends, went home, and slept. Around the second month, it started. Piles and piles of strange homework assignments flowed into my backpack and suffocated me. Sleepless nights became a norm while Senioritis was definitely catching up with me. I was dying. Dying might be a bit too dramatic but my situation made me think at least 50 times that I wasn't going to make it to the next day. I gradually began to assimilate to the intensity of the homework, but November soon came. That meant college applications were constantly on the mouths of my other senior classmates and competition, secrecy and paranoia was a constant tension that filled the air. I felt as though I were thrown into a whirlpool. I was completely clueless, missing deadlines, tossing and turning before I fell into a deadly sleep, and most of all pestered by family and peers about my everything that mattered and everything that didn't matter. I was inches away from exploding, but that was probably how all of my senior friends felt.

Now it is April...April 5 to be exact in the dear year of 2013. We have survived the supposed "Apocalypse" and the exciting presidential elections of 2012. We watched Michael Phelps trump everyone in swimming, once again, and we now await the Winter Olympics of 2014 in Sochi, Russia. Last but not least, we are receiving rejection letters from colleges DAILY. (Oh, and some acceptances.)

As of today, I have been luckily granted with a pile of colleges that have placed me on their waiting list and around 6 colleges that have accepted me, the great Erica the Senior. I have gone to one reception, for Johns Hopkins and am attending the UCLA Bruins Day next week on the day of my prom, which I will happily inform you: I am not going because of the ridiculous price.

So far, I have decided that Johns Hopkins will be the way to go. Even though I have never really visited the college, except for random "virtual tours" through youtube, etc, I decided that it was a worthy adventure. Being the argonaut I am, I have weighted the costs and benefits properly to conclude: If I studied hard in college, I will be successful in getting into graduate school. All I need is the right college, which I have deemed Johns Hopkins to be. Before I go to Johns Hopkins though, I plan on taking a gap year to GERMANY!!!! The great Deutschland. Yes! In February, I applied to the CBYX (Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange) program and was just recently chosen to be a scholarship student dragged away from the comforts and confines of my small-town life in SoCal to the larger world of Europe.

I hope that through this blog, you can take interest in my adventures from this point on! Hasta La Vista!


- Erica the Argonaut.