College Conundrum by Lily

College Conundrum by Lily - January 2026 Scholarship Essay

Have you ever wondered if you could do a certain task? Have you ever had something to do that seemed monumental? Have you ever had a deadline that seemed like it was rushing up on you way too fast? This was how I felt when I first started preparing for college.

Before eleventh grade I had never stopped to truly think about how I would pay for college, or what college I would go to. However, at the start of my junior year I realized that college was coming up. Fast. And I was unprepared.

Junior year is supposed to be one of the most rigorous years of high school. The workload increases and the subjects get harder. On top of that I was trying to get ready for college. I needed to stay on top of my school work, apply for loads of scholarships, search for colleges, take tests, and get ready to apply to college. It all seemed like too much to do in one year and I was starting to panic.

One night, after a hard day at school, I was lying awake in bed thinking about all the things I still had to do. As I was thinking about all the scholarships I had missed that week and the bad grade I had gotten that day, I realized that I was so focused on how much I still had to do that I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing. The week had flown by in a haze of worry about what could happen, not realization about what had happened. So far, none of my horrible predictions had come true and all I was doing was working myself up over nothing. But how could I stop worrying?

The next morning I remembered something my mom had said when I was little. Whenever I got stressed she told me to take things “one step at a time”, focusing on the task at hand instead of the next two. I resolved to follow this advice, and the next week was much better. While worries came back occasionally, if I ignored them and refocused on the task in front of me, it became much less stressful. In fact, I found myself getting more things done than before.

Now I know that with a little hard work and a lot of help, I will get ready for college in time. I don’t need to worry about what hasn’t happened. Planning ahead is good, but stressing over every little detail is not. Everything happens in its own time and worrying doesn’t change anything for the better.