By Chrissy Payne
Round Table reporter

The busyness of my senior year and applying to colleges has been very stressful to say the least. It’s unreal to think that all the time and effort I have put into perfecting my grades and accumulating all the extra curricular activities that I can actually matter now.

As I meet with my counselor for my senior meeting and look at my high school transcripts, I begin to think if it’s all worth it. I see grades in classes that I thought I could have done better in. As I fill in all of my applications it comes to my attention that it really does matter.

I begin to think that if maybe I would have stayed after school for tutoring an extra time, or spent the extra half an hour doing my homework, I could have gotten that A in the class. Or if I hadn’t gone to that basketball game against Walkersville and stayed home and studied than maybe I could have done better.

Than there’s the debate: is spending time with my friends or doing school work more important? 

For me both are very important, and sometimes spending time with friends took the priority before school work. At that moment in time, spending time with friends seemed like the only option; and that if I didn’t hang out with them than my life would be over. Suffering the consequences when the next test came was not fun. But none the less the pattern would repeat.

As I look at my transcript I think back to those times I made the decision to blow off my school work to hang with friends. I always passed the class with a B, but the more I think about it I could have finished with an A in most classes.

When making the decisions I did I never thought about the long term consequences that not studying or doing my homework would have on me. Now as I apply to colleges I see that taking the extra time to do good in school really does matter.

Taking the time to try your best really does pay off and if I could go back and do anything over in my high school career it would be to push myself just a little bit harder to get to where I wanted to be. It’s all about keeping the balance between your social and academic life and I’m glad I have realized this before entering college.