UCSB wasn’t my dream school.
Sure, to any high school senior UCSB seems like a dream. Studying on the beach, perfect weather, easygoing people — what’s not to love?
It’s not that I didn’t love it, per se — I just didn’t really give it a second thought. “I could see myself there,” high-school-senior me thought. “I could definitely be happy there,” she said, as she pictured herself biking through a sunny campus, freckled and smiling as a carefree Communication major.
Simply put, UCSB just wasn’t on my radar. Yeah, I applied—like literally every California teen—and figured it was somewhere I could survive. But I didn’t really care about it.
I was even so indifferent to UCSB that I prayed I wouldn’t be accepted so my (now ex) boyfriend would be — it was his dream school! “God, please let him get in, he needs it more than I do,” I silently begged before I opened the all-important decision email. So, when I saw the confetti and congratulations light up my screen, along with a text from him that read “Rejected!” I couldn’t help but think
“Sh*t.”
Yes, “sh*t” was the first thing that went through my mind when I got into this school: the place I now call home. An achievement I should have relished in, but didn’t because of my stupid ego and a stupid boy.
“At least it’s an option,” I thought, more occupied with the idea of the other schools’ decisions coming out in the next few days.
The truth is, I was a little cocky. The crapshoot process of college admissions hadn’t challenged my self worth (yet). My student-council-president-varsity-soccer-national-honor-society-secretary-straight-A-seven-AP-32-ACT ego hadn’t been humbled. I was a classic cookie-cutter textbook overachiever. Truthfully, I thought I could do “better” than UCSB.
In the following weeks, I was faced with my first rejections and waitlists, and my invincible self-worth was tanked. I watched friends crush my dreams as they accepted theirs.
I cried, I screamed, I wept, and I probably consumed far too much ice cream. I felt the crushing devastation of all my achievements, my work, and my identity diminished to rejection.
The college admissions’ process is a grueling, vicious cycle that annually demands unattainable achievements and demolishes students’ self worth. It’s a process I’m thrilled to never endure again, and a process I am all too familiar with. Though cruel and unforgiving, as cliché as it sounds, it’s a process that showed me that everything happens for a reason.
While my hopes and sights were set on other places, life had different ideas. As I waited, and waited, and waited on never-budging waitlists for what I thought were “better” schools, UCSB was there. UCSB wanted me, despite my not wanting it.
When it became clear my fate would be sealed at the single-square-mile utopia known as Isla Vista, I was still in disbelief. It wasn’t love at first sight, it wasn’t even love at first quarter. I had a lot of growing to do, and UCSB knew how to make it happen — I owe it everything for that.
Now I don’t have that boyfriend, or those resume points I previously defined myself with, or the delusional bubble high school me existed in. Instead, what I do have is the version of myself I wouldn’t have been able to become without UCSB, and the people, and opportunities it brought to me.
The truth is, I had no idea what I wanted, no idea where I needed to be, and no idea who I was. UCSB gave me the perfect balance of comfort and discomfort, relaxation and pressure, work and play to discover the version of myself I am meant to become.
To high school seniors still waiting on decisions, tallying up acceptances, holding onto waitlists, and grieving rejections: trust the process, and trust yourself. You are what makes any school a dream. You’ll find your people, yourself, your new dreams, no matter where you end up.
And hey, if you end up at your dream school, congratulations! You earned it, don’t let me rain on your parade!
But if you don’t, just remember:
UCSB wasn’t my dream school. Now, it’s a dream I hope I never have to wake up from.