As some of you may have figured out, I’m in High School. To be specific, I am a rising senior, britches-deep in the throes of College applications. This post is going to be a little different than usual in that…I don’t know if I really have any advice in it? It’s more just going to be a vent session that hopefully some can relate to. Let’s get to it.

This past year, my dad retired from his job. This, combined with the fact that almost all of the offspring (me!) are college-age, has made my parents think about the value in sticking around in an over-priced town that people move to for the school system. Deciding there wasn’t one, they went on the prowl for a move-worthy location. What started in no-man’s-land (but many-horses-land!) Colorado eventually landed on California. For a while, my parents seemed sure that California was where they wanted to be.

As such, I began to research and visit colleges in California. I assembled my list, and I was ready for the summer before senior year. Things got messy after that though, and my parents started doubting their choice to move to California. I think right now they’re about 60-40 for moving there.

So…that brings me to the present. I now have a list of 19 colleges to apply to because of my parents’ uncertainty about which coast they’ll be on. They want me, at the very least, on the same coast as them, so I need to account for both coasts with my list (safeties, targets, and reaches; you know the drill). So what has that meant for horseback riding?

Nineteen tours, nineteen info sessions, nineteen ‘why this college’ supplements— these applications take time. Being the stress-case that I am, I knew I had to finish at least 85% by the end of the summer.

“But the deadline is January!” True, but every time someone has said that, it has only made me stress more.

Long story, long, my entire summer has been dedicated to sitting my butt in a chair and typing supplement after supplement. Don’t get me wrong, I happen to be a freak who loves this process. I love writing, and I love college. The problem is, however, getting to a horse barn that’s 30 minutes away from my house (on a good day) when I’m—pardon the re-use— britches-deep in a college application is hard. It’s hard for two reasons.

First of all, there’s the time out of the day that both activities eat up. Second, I find that after typing a 2000 word supplement with a word limit of 250, my brain tends to be a little fried. Every time I’m at the barn, I feel utterly relaxed and my Brain Fry is irrelevant. While I’m making the decision to go to the barn, my brain fry seems to block the pathway that tells me horseback riding will be good for me. Instead all I hear is “Um, you’re way too tired.”

My answer is to horseback ride first. I know that I’ll have the motivation afterward to work on applications, but if I do applications first, sometimes it’s really hard to make myself drive to the barn. And then I feel horribly guilty about not seeing my baby, and…slippery slope, ya know? So, in all my bedhead and grumpy glory, I wake up early (ugh early, I know) to go horseback ride. Then, I come home, eat some brain food (90% sugar), and open my half-broken computer (story for another time), and do some “why this college” essays.

So, I don’t know if that’s really advice. Or if it’s even relevant to anyone. But that’s my story, and it felt good to vent.