For the majority of college bound seniors, August and September are the months where one will pick a few colleges to apply to and maybe begin to look into their application process. But for those, like me, who have made the leap to apply early decision, it is crunch time. I am personally applying early decision to the University of Florida, which has a deadline of October 1st, while most colleges have deadlines later this winter. Firmly deciding upon early decision instead of regular decision is probably one of the hardest choices I've ever had to make, but, as I go through the process, I no longer have that sick feeling in my stomach and am becoming much more comfortable with and confident in my decision.

Throughout this process, I'd been in no great hurry to fill anything out or to look into 'backup' colleges. Like most normal teenagers, I saw no point in rushing through my UF application just to wait until December to find out results. I had enough to deal with between being my neurotic self, balancing five AP classes, being a yearbook editor, and the student council vice president. However, I soon discovered the importance of discussing the application process with my friends. My best friend already attends UF so on one of our typical late night phone conversations, she informed me that the sooner I turn in my application, the sooner I will receive what is called my priority date. The earlier my priority date, the better chance I have of getting the on-campus housing of my choice as well as the classes I wish to enroll in (should I get accepted). With this new piece of information I literally went into a fit of panic. I had just wasted away an entire month of precious time stalling on my application. I now had most of my application to fill out, two essays to write, and two recommendations to give to already busy teachers in order to get my application in before the rush at the deadline.

For a while, the stress was unbearable. But I learned my lesson: always check out ALL the information in the application, the fine print is there for a reason. I debated again with myself about possibly sending in my application with the regular decision application batch, so that I could have more time to fill it out, but decided to give the extra effort to finish my application over one weekend and dedicated myself entirely to filling out every last piece of paperwork. I pushed toward the finish line: I took all the residency pages and highlighted information that I needed my mom to fill out and then I typed it into my online application; I wrote both of my essays, revised them, and then took them into my AP Literature teacher where she gave me a few valuable pointers on my writing the following week; I also gave two teachers a recommendation form and asked them to mail it into UF within two weeks so as not to stress them out; and, finally, I mailed in my early decision contract, binding me to go to the University of Florida, should I get in. Then, with a shaky hand, I hit 'submit' on my online application and made a huge step towards becoming a college student. Although I wish that I had had more time to spend on the process like most other students who are applying to colleges now, I'm glad that it's done and over with. I couldn't be more confident that I made the right decision to push through the stress and finally apply to my ideal college.