Early mornings composed of four hours of filling in bubbles, late nights spent tapping out one’s life story, and non-existent spring breaks used to drive across the nation—like the holidays, the college application process comes once a year. However, unlike the smell of eggnog, the glow of candles, and the sound of sleigh bells ringing through the frigid winter air; the hand cramps, college-visiting weekends, and stress last way beyond December.

Though every application process has its own twists and turns, the so called “protocol” each applicant must abide by has proven to be similar to the cheek-pinching relatives and holiday sweaters students all must endure – for they are all universal traditions that time just can’t seem to erase. Similar to holiday carols, students can all recite the words that describe the day and life of a high school student going through the application process.

“There is a lot going into the college process,” senior Brett Virgin-Downey said. “You have to research and visit colleges, and have some inkling of what field you want to go into. In addition, you have to get teacher recommendations, fill out applications, and revise, revise, revise all your essays.”

Once the standardized testing is out of the way, students are then bombarded with hours of writing essays and getting teacher recommendations.

“[Since] the essays aren’t very long, every word counts, making revision an absolute must,” Virgin-Downey said.

Likewise, many students find themselves encountering the same obstacles.

“I think the hardest thing about writing the essays is thinking of what to write about,” senior Tom Haslam said. “There’s a lot of pressure on what you say because every sentence changes the reader’s opinion of you. In addition, balancing grades and applications is also very difficult. It’s like an endless cycle because if you don’t do your homework, you get bad grades and you lessen your chance of going to your college of choice, but the later you apply, the same thing happens.”

Unfortunately, with the unexpected loss of one of CHS’ college counselors prior to the start of school, this year’s seniors and staff are finding the application process even more stressful.

“It’s really unbelievable,” CHS college counselor Carolyn Blair said. “I mean it’s just not really describable. This change was forced upon us. This was no one’s idea, you know, because we lost somebody. We’re just responding because this is just the situation we’re in. There was not anyone we could hire at the time that we found out we needed to hire someone that had the knowledge base to step in.”
In attempts to accommodate the loss of a college counselor, Blair has cut back on her schedule in order to satisfy the needs of CHS seniors.

“Part of my job is here at Clayton and part of it is out in the college community,” Blair said. “I am on several university advisory boards around the country, so in a normal year, I do a lot of traveling to attend those meetings as well as visiting colleges. However, this year I have cut back on my travels. What has changed the most for me is volume. The volume of writing letters of recommendations and answering questions has increased drastically from last year.  I’ve tried to educate people in groups because I thought it would be easier than doing it one by one. So I had several group information sessions for both students and parents. We had about seven or more different meetings to [provide them with] pertinent information. However that doesn’t work entirely because people still need to get questions answered one by one. It’s been a lot of emailing and just a lot of work – lots of letters to write, emails to answer, and forms to prepare.”

However, these scheduling changes still seem to fall short of the expectations of the seniors, since some are feeling that they are traveling the road solo.

“Our class had some bad luck with the Clayton School District,” Haslam said. “The loss of one of our college counselors without forewarning was an example. We now use a program called Naviance Family Connection that is supposed to help organize a student’s choices for college and get their teacher recommendations done. I like the fact that you can access your college info from any computer, but I feel like it puts too much work on Mrs. Blair’s shoulders to have everyone requesting recommendations from her. Mrs. Blair has been helpful with understanding the process, but I feel like it’s basically all up to me to get things done.”

Likewise, many seniors feel as though the change has given them little room to experiment during the process.

“Now that CHS has one counselor, I think more emphasis is put on the students to get things right,” Virgin-Downey said. “If the students meet all their deadlines and fill out their questionnaires, it makes Ms. Blair’s job way easier. I guess you could say there had never been any room for error on the student’s part, but now more than ever.”

In addition, many students also feel as though they aren’t receiving the preferred amount of assistance during the process due to the shortage of counselors.

“It’s definitely gotten harder,” senior Mimi Liu said. “I’ll come into the counselor’s office to sign up for a time with the counselor and see that the next three weeks are filled up. I e-mail Mrs. Blair a lot and usually she is pretty good at getting back my e-mails, even if her answers are a bit short. I realize Mrs. Blair has a lot on her plate, but I definitely wish I could spend a little more time with her.”
The seniors, however, have gotten the better end of the deal—for Mrs. Blair’s short emails come with a reason.

“I have right now 342 emails in my inbox,” Blair said. “I know that it is difficult for people to realize, because people just see their situation and they are not concerned about other students, their focus is on themselves and their needs, as it should be, but it’s hard for people to realize that my focus is on the entire class and every single student needs and deserves some of my time, but I am just one person. Ultimately, the concern is if I got their stuff done, is really the bottom line.”

Although the process is even more strenuous this year, with the assistance of CHS’ counseling team, Blair has been able to make the best of the situation to her ability.

“It’s all been doable based on the support of the other counselors,” Blair said. “I have a lot of outside responsibilities, like I’m on the administrative team and also in charge of registration. Another counselor has gone to the administrative meetings for me so that I can free up my time to meet with students. From the beginning of school to right now, I have not traveled as much as normal and other counselors have gone to those administrative team type meetings for me so that I could be available every period. I’ve pretty much tried to make myself available every day possible, every single period, including lunch and after school just for students.”