After enduring twelve years of grueling, compulsory education, we (the students) are at a crossroads: As we seek to delay our adult life and escape the clutches of our parents, we frantically begin the search for the higher education institutions that will host us for the next four years (or more for some of us). We can taste the freedom from the constant nagging of our parents, yet, we cannot imagine Friday afternoons without mom’s delicious carne asada.

As the college application deadline approaches, we grow increasingly anxious (for some, even, their hair begins falling off or it turns white), as uncertainty overwhelms us. I am going to get in? If so, will it be to my dream college or one of my back-ups? Oh God, please, let me get in!

As an individual that has lost numerous hours of sleep thinking about how desperately I want to go to a particular institution, I fail to look at the positive. “I am not going to get in,” I think to myself as I lay down looking into the blank ceiling at 2 a.m. in the morning, “I am going to have to go to a college that I do not want to go to.”

However, recently I been thinking of how lucky we (as people who live in the United States and the Western World in general) are: There are thousands, if not millions, of qualified students in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that would yearn to get a college education wherever possible; however, they might not even get to set foot at an university. College is not about where you, but what you make out of it. An “A” student will be an “A” student at Harvard or Chaffey. Anyways, the whole point is that we must appreciate what we have and thank that, at least, we have the option and luxury of going to college.