In the throe of the scheduling madness, I always ask myself, "Why do we need so many options?" I hesitate to write, "Back in my day...," causing the reader to perceive I am out of touch, but nonetheless, I continue to see the stress level in my students increase more and more every year. It starts in mid-August when students receive their schedules for the upcoming year and are disappointed they didn't get their top elective or a preferred teacher. Begging commences, and sometimes tears are shed, but eventually, the student moves on and copes, yet still disappointed that s/he didn't receive the ideal schedule. Then, once scheduling is officially finalized (at least for this fall; it will rear its ugly head in January) the senior college application frenzy initiates, with a litany of questions from parents and students:
“If I’m applying to a college that is test-optional, should I submit my scores? Do you think I’d be better off going to a small liberal arts school or to a university that has lots of options? Is it more practical to major in biology rather than enter into a pre-med program? If a school has a rolling deadline, when should I apply? Will I be penalized for not writing the “optional” essay on this supplement? Do you think I should apply single-choice early action to Yale or early decision to BC?”
I often find myself exhausted by the number of decisions my students have to make regarding college choice. It all starts during junior year, in which students are forced to tackle the gargantuan task of whittling down their list from an initial pool of 3000 to about 6 or 10. It finally ends with the senior application process, in which even the savviest 12th grader can get swept away in the minutia of how to present the best application package to colleges.
In the counseling department, we do our best to guide students towards making informed choices, but sometimes I sense that certain seniors are left disappointed, fearing that by making a final decision, they may have lost out on an opportunity at a different college. The more I started thinking about the abundance of alternatives that are available in our lives (not only in the world of college admissions but also outside our front doors) the more I began to realize how crippling making these decisions can be.
My curiosity drove me to research the notion of choice and I was surprised to find that there have been a variety of studies done on this concept. Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, notes that people living in a westernized society often make the assumption that the more options people have, the more freedom they enjoy. He notes that due to America’s capitalistic mentality, it is now possible to purchase more than 175 different types of salad dressing in a typical grocery store. At his local electronics store, he calculates that a shopper could end up buying one of 6.5 million different configurations of stereo systems.
However, as it turns out, being presented with too many options is stressful to our brains; it gives us too many ideas to compare and contrast. As a result, Schwartz postulates that an excess of choice imposes two negative effects: one, it produces paralysis rather than liberation. With so many options, it can be difficult to choose at all. Looking back on my own application process, I now realize that my desire to avoid choices may have led me to choose the college that I did. I didn’t want to research too many schools for fear of being confused by all of the options...and, I'm not going to lie, touring schools took me away from my friends. As such, I visited one school in Boston, felt like I would fit in there, so I decided to attend. My search was done.
Additionally, the second consequence of copious choices is that ultimately, we end up less satisfied with the selection we eventually make. Schwartz’s theory is that if we invest significant time and energy choosing an option, we expect it to be ideal. If it is not, we often have a nagging sensation that we could have done better. Since fortunately, most of our decisions are less weighty, one way in which Schwartz suggests we tackle the problem is to become more comfortable with the idea of “good enough.” Seeking perfection, especially in big decisions like colleges is a recipe for misery.
For students or parents who may have been horrified when I admitted to visiting only one school’s campus, I now realize that this fact was, in fact, a blessing in disguise. Another reason I didn’t do more research is that I never expected a school to be absolutely perfect. My expectation helped me to be more realistic about my freshman year; frankly, I wasn’t immediately happy during my first semester, but I recognized that my struggles would likely have remained the same, no matter where I went to school.
Remember that the typical senior does have difficulty transitioning to college, and those who struggle most are often those who idealized their experience before moving into campus. Recognize that nothing is perfect. Movies, television shows, and online media have all hyped up college to be “the best time of our lives,” but in reality, it is not always the case. Although I grew to love my school, it was a process that occurred over time, as I found my niche and grew more comfortable with my identity as a college student. As an adult, I now realize that going to college is a grand adventure in its own right, as teenagers will experience tremendous growth during these four years. And, sometimes, struggling can be part of the process that eventually sparks genius; many entrepreneurs say that feeling uncomfortable is the key to success, and if we frame our college experiences in this mindset, society as a whole can reduce the stress level in our teenagers.
