This week has been one of the worst weeks of my life. I know that sounds really melodramatic but it is how I feel. I received three college rejection letters this week. I knew that getting into all three of these schools would be impossible, but I was hopeful I would get into one of these schools. While I have more decisions to receive, they are from schools harder to get into than the three schools I was just rejected from, so I am feeling very hopeless about the rest of the decisions I will be receiving. Last time I talked about how excited I was about the one college I got into, but I just received the financial aid package and they offered me no aid, so if I choose to attend my favorite college out of the colleges I have been accepted to, I will be in a lot of debt. I know I will have debt no matter which college I choose, but the amount of debt I would have to take on to go to this school is astronomical. I feel as though all my hard work in school has not really paid off. It is very frustrating and upsetting.
On top of these college decisions, this week has brought other problems. My grandmother who lives with us always goes to Florida during the winter. The other night though we received a call that she passed out and fell and was at the hospital. I am extremely close to my grandmother and was devastated to hear that she had broken her shoulder, was in excruciating pain, and may need to have surgery. My mom decided to fly out the next day to be with her and bring her home so she can receive further help from Boston doctors. So in addition to worrying about my grandmother, my mom was not here to comfort me during all the crushing college rejections this week.
Overall I am just feeling blue, and I hope that everything works out; college wise and family wise.
I am overwhelmed by all the excitement March and April have brought and will continue to bring. In regards to college, as I have said many times, by the end of March I will know all my options for college and will finally be making a decision in regards to where I will be spending the next four years of my life. I have received my first regular decision back and am so excited to have been accepted. (I was accepted very early on to a safety school with rolling admissions and do not count that as my first acceptance). This school however is one of my top choices, and I literally started screaming when I unexpectedly received an email letting me know I was “in”. Most schools have firm decision dates, but this school has been sending out batches of decisions each week. I am eagerly awaiting my admittance package in the mail. I will not make a firm decision until I hear back from every school and look over each school’s financial aid package, but even if every single school after this rejects me, I know I will be happy for the next four years.
In addition to college craziness, there is a presidential election that I do not think could be more exciting. Not only are both the Republicans and Democrats having elections to decide their nominee (unlike 2012 where Obama was up for re-election), but the candidates themselves are extremely interesting. Donald Trump, while in my opinion is a horrible candidate, has undoubtedly made the election much more fascinating, as he is dominating the primaries so far and crushing the establishment candidates. On the Democratic side, what originally seemed like a non-contest with Clinton as the party’s nominee, has quickly changed with Bernie Sanders picking up steam. While Clinton is still on track to become the nominee, she now has to work much harder to stay on track. She is also being challenged on her connections to Wall Street and other issues by Sanders and moderators during debates, which without Sanders, would be nonexistent. If he had not run, others may have run, but no one (except maybe Elizabeth Warren) would be challenging her on Wall Street issues as much as Sanders.
And while not important by any stretch of the imagination, I am excited for new episodes of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver as well as the return of his podcast, The Bugle, with fellow British satirist Andy Zaltzman. What was once a weekly podcast, had, until now, become a non-existent podcast. It has been on hiatus for over 9 months due to John Oliver’s TV show as well as the birth of his first son, and I cannot believe it is actually returning this Friday.
There is an unprecedented amount of excitement, and I am going to ride this wave for as long as it lasts.
This week was Super Tuesday, though I would argue it was less of a “super” day and more of a really scary and depressing day. I was very excited I was able to vote for the first time, but my excitement quickly turned to disgust once the results started coming in.
Donald Trump won seven states including our state of Massachusetts. Last year everyone thought that the Republican base would come to its senses and that the polls showing Trump way in the lead would prove to be inaccurate. But despite, controversy after controversy, Trump is now on his way to be the nominee. Even after refusing on national television to disavow David Duke and the KKK, Trump is still going strong. Later in the day he finally did disavow, but only after being pressured. It seems that he is well aware that the majority of white supremacists support him and that he does not want to alienate his base. It is seriously terrifying that someone who is openly racist may win the Republican party nomination and even the presidency.
Many think that Trump stands no chance in a general election, but I think that he does if Hillary Clinton becomes the democratic nominee (which currently seems likely). In head to head polls, Clinton only beats Trump by one percentage point. The reason I believe he could beat Clinton is because he is “not establishment” and because Clinton is hated by many Democrats and Republicans. This is the year of anti-establishment candidates and Clinton is the epitome of establishment. Cruz, the other anti-establishment candidate on the Republican side is currently doing better than Rubio and the other Republican establishment candidates. On the left, while not currently leading the race, Bernie Sanders is keeping Hillary Clinton on her toes, by winning many states and virtually tieing her in other states (like Iowa and Massachusetts). Clinton was always viewed as the inevitable nominee but Sanders, another anti-establishment candidate, is making her really work for the nomination. Sanders in head to head match ups with Trump does better than Clinton, and I think this is because Sanders, like Trump, is anti-establishment. He also has less “baggage” than Clinton. People on the left dislike her because they feel she is not truly liberal, has flip-flopped on many issues, and represents wall-street and big money interests. People on the right do not like her because they feel she would be like another eight years of Obama and that she is a liar. While this is anecdotal, I have heard many people who currently support Sanders say that if the general election is Trump versus Clinton, that they will switch over and vote for Trump.
While I understand the appeal of an outsider, who speaks “the truth”, in reality Donald Trump often does not speak the truth but relies on playing on people’s fears. He points towards minorities, blaming them for America’s problems and promises to return America to greatness. If this sounds familiar, well it should. Hitler used the anger Germans justifiably felt after WWI and directed it towards a particular group (Jews), promising to restore his nation to greatness. People often wonder how someone like Hitler could come into power: “How could someone so terrible and clearly evil receive the support of so many? I would never let myself be brainwashed!”. I now point to Trump as to how this can happen. Hitler originally wanted to deport the Jews, the people he blamed for Germany’s decline, but when that became impossible he resorted to concentration camps. Trump wants to deport millions of people, but what will happen when he realizes that that is not feasible?
Someone found a snippet from the first article mentioning Hitler from the New York Times. The first paragraph is extremely troubling.
People believed that Hitler’s antisemitism was disingenuous and that he was just using it to gain support. Many currently believe Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican remarks were also not as “violent as it sounded”.
I have mentioned on this blog before that my favorite show in the whole world is Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. While he had been saying for months that he did not want to talk about Trump, he finally did. He originally felt that Trump was just a fun and in the end meaningless and inconsequential distraction. He did not want to give him the attention he craved but did not deserve. While comedians have been making funny jabs for months, this segment (over 20 minutes long) is brilliant because it actually treats Trump like the serious candidate he is, breaking down every reason why his supporters like him and why many of those reasons and beliefs are wrong or misplaced. He also gets to the root of the problem. He explains that people are enchanted by the brand of Trump, and that it is important now that he is a serious candidate for president to separate the brand from the actual man himself. This video has gone viral, but if you have not seen it yet, please watch and enjoy/cry.
Remember how excited I was for February? Well, it did not pan out exactly how I thought it would. All I want now is for it to be March. I know that it sounds like I am just wishing time away, but this time I mean it! By the end of March, I will FINALLY know ALL my college decisions. Even though I know in my heart that almost all my decisions will be rejections, the unknown is honestly more painful than the rejection letters. I received one rejection letter in November, and it was such a relief. I was not upset. It felt so wonderful to finally know the result of my application and to be able to finally stop thinking about it. I was physically shaking each day the week before the decision came out, and I was so glad when it was all over. I finally was able to move on.
The end of March will bring fifteen separate decisions, which seems surreal since I have not heard any news regarding college decisions for months. Even if all but one are rejections, I will finally be able to relax. The stress of not knowing has been getting worse and worse, making it so hard to focus on anything else. I am trying to distract myself with school and activities and projects that need to get done, but I find myself constantly checking college portals for no reason, secretly hoping I will be able to glean something out of the mundane information contained such as my name and the college within the university that I applied to.
Thirteen years of schooling has led to this moment. March, typically the most boring month of the year, will actually be the most interesting/exciting/terrifying month of possibly my entire life up until this point. I know I sound dramatic and that one day I will look back at all of this and laugh, but this is how it feels right now. Hopefully I will be able to buy myself a college sweatshirt soon.
The Iowa Caucuses are over and the presidential candidates are now moving on to campaigning near our homes in New Hampshire for the New Hampshire primary. The Iowa Caucuses were full of suspense and surprises from both the Republicans and Democrats.
On the Republican side, Ted Cruz emerged the victor leaving Donald Trump in second. And as tweeted by Trump once “No one remembers who came in second”. Marco Rubio came in third. I predicted months ago, long before the Caucus, that Marco Rubio would surge ahead. I still think he will eventually become the Republican nominee as I thought months ago. Cruz winning Iowa is unsurprising considering his following and relationship with evangelical Christians there. I also think Trump’s second place is just the beginning of his decline. While Marco Rubio did well coming in third, he still did not win. If you just watched his speech after the Caucuses, however; you would have thought he had won.
On the Democrat side, I sat on the edge of my seat as the results from precinct after precinct trickled in. The race in Iowa could not have been closer. As more and more results came in, the race became tighter and tighter. It went from 51% for Hillary Clinton and 49% for Bernie Sanders to 50% for Hillary Clinton and 50% for Bernie Sanders. The closest they became was Hillary Clinton ahead by approximately 3 delegate equivalents (different than actual delegates) with a 0.2% lead. The race was too close to call, and the final results were not called until the next day, but Hillary Clinton’s campaign decided to declare themselves the winners the night of when the race was too close to call which surprised everyone. And then in the middle of Ted Cruz’s speech, Hillary Clinton began her speech. The networks were as bewildered as I was by these choices. Twitter meanwhile was abuzz that some precincts were deciding the winner by a coin flip; it was that close! In the end Hillary Clinton eked out a win in Iowa by the smallest of margins, but both candidates will receive about the same number of delegates. It is not a winner takes all situation so it is not extremely important who won when the margins are so close. In the end, Hillary Clinton will receive 23 delegates and Bernie Sanders will receive 21 delegates.
I am excited to see what happens next in the New Hampshire primaries, and then in our own primary on Super Tuesday.
In a previous blog post I talked about how I could not wait for it to be February because everything would be done. It is the end of January now, midterms are over, and every aspect of my college applications including the interviews is done. I honestly thought I would feel so relieved, but instead I am more anxious now than ever.
I have put all of my blood, sweat, and tears into my college applications and now I have to wait until the end of March/beginning of April to find out anything. While it technically is only a couple months away, it feels like forever. The decisions I will receive will determine where I spend the next four years of my life; who I will meet, what I will do, what I will learn. I am excited but mostly nervous. I have never experienced receiving so many important decisions all at once. I believe there is good and bad in receiving all the decisions around the same time. On one hand, it will be hard to deal with so much rejection at once, but on the other hand it will be nice if after receiving a rejection I can also receive even one acceptance.
I am the most impatient person in the world, but I am trying to put it all out of my head. It is easy to speculate and drive yourself crazy over-analyzing your application and trying to figure out what is going on in an admission person’s head. I am trying to remember that I cannot change my application. I did my best and I cannot control the decisions so I might as well enjoy the end of my Senior year before I go back to being at the bottom of the food chain as a freshman.
Saturday is Launch Day for Project 351 and for months now I have been preparing to lead my Service Hero Team and my ALCer mentee through a day of service.
What is Project 351? Project 351 is one of the most amazing organizations and one of the hardest to explain. Each year, an eighth grade ambassador from every community in Massachusetts is selected for their service and leadership potential. As a former ambassador and current member of the founding Alumni Leadership Council (ALC), I have had the incredible opportunity to help guide the direction of the organization and mentor new ambassadors each year with their Project 351 service projects. I enjoy providing advice to ambassadors such as how to advertise for clothing collections and connect with food pantries for food drives. The ALC gathers at leadership summits as well as teleconferences in order to brainstorm ways to engage ambassadors in service and to plan Launch Day and Reunion. During Launch Day and Reunion, we each lead our team of ambassadors through team-building exercises and guide them through a day of community service. At Launch Day we gather at the State House or in Faneuil Hall in the morning. Throughout the years I have heard from inspirational speakers like Governor Patrick, Governor Baker, Bill Richard, Senator Seth Moulton, Robert Kraft, and others. Then we go out to service sites throughout the city painting murals, creating scarves, and packaging meals for the homeless. We then come back together to celebrate our service. This year all ALC members who are Seniors in high school are on a council within the council called the Senior Leadership Council. I was partnered this year with a younger ALC member to help her lead our team of ambassadors during Launch Day. I have been going to Launch Day since 8th grade. I am so excited but also sad because this is my last Launch Day. I'll save my tears though for our Reunion; the last Project 351 event I will ever attend.
