One foot in front of the other.
No matter what direction you are planning on walking, college application season is equally as stressful for every single senior; but it’s good to know that you don’t have to take the journey alone. There are resources even among the school that can help assuage any feelings of stress or worry you have during this season.
Our college and career counselor, Mrs. Kondak, insists that her door is always open for any senior or rising senior who wants to talk about their next steps after graduating from Groves. During our conversion, she wanted to emphasize that she is a college and career counselor, and even if you don’t plan on going to college, she is always willing to talk with you without any shame. In Birmingham and at Groves, specifically, we have a “college-going” culture, which influences many people to think that college is the only option after high school, which simply is not true.
“Not every kid needs to go to college right after high school. Some kids need to grow up a little bit. Some kids need to go out and work for a year and decide. Some kids need to go out and take a gap year” Mrs. Kondak said. While seniors may feel pressure to do what 95% of the senior class is doing, not everyone’s journey is the same, and that’s okay. College isn’t going anywhere. Even if you aren’t ready for it, it is always ready for you. Exploring higher education when you are in adulthood has become an increasingly less controversial topic, with the general consensus coming to: nobody really cares. Learning is for everyone, and that’s what college is all about, whether that’s learning more about your respective field of study or learning about yourself, college is a great beacon for that. For the people that are ready to reach that checkpoint, Mrs. Kondak also has words of advice for you.
Choosing the place that you are going to spend the next four to eight years of your life is a huge decision to make.
“This is the first choice. It’s not the last choice, and if it’s the wrong choice for you, you can change your mind,” Mrs. Kondak said. The decision you make right now for where you want to go to school won’t dictate your whole life. If you don’t end up liking the school you pick, you can always transfer. Though the transfer process is generally more selective than the undergraduate admissions process, it is still a viable option. If you are having trouble choosing where you want to go in the first place, Mrs. Kondak and your personal counselor are always there to help you decide which school will offer you the best environment to be successful in.
“I’ve seen kids go really highly competitive, then change their mind, and I’ve seen kids that start at OCC and say, this isn’t enough for me. And they always end up where they need to be. And everybody’s on their own timeline. There’s no recipe for how this is supposed to go,” Mrs. Kondak said.
Nothing is set in stone, especially the decisions you make at 17 and 18 years old. If you are a senior, take some time between looking at college decisions and applying, and look back on how far you have come. Appreciate every moment that you have lived through to get to this point in your life. Just breathe, put one foot in front of the other, and move forward. Everything works out exactly how it is supposed to with time. There is no right or wrong decision because every decision you make leads you closer to where you are supposed to be.
“My job here is to get you to the end of the dock, and have you leave the dock (which is Groves). But, some kids go in a speedboat, some kids go in a pontoon boat, some kids go on a paddle board, some kids swim [and] some kids, you know, they go with a friend. There isn’t only one path out of here,” Mrs.Kondak said.
That was the number one thing Mrs. Kondak wanted all seniors and rising seniors to know about life after high school; nobody’s path will be the same, and that’s okay. This next step is guaranteed to be a step in the direction of freedom, so go out and live a little, no matter what that might look like.
