In Defense of Senioritis

Each of my fellow seniors has had a different experience with college admissions.  Some applied to just a few schools or schools that have mercifully short applications, and their process was, to my knowledge, relatively painless.  Others were accepted by a school under a binding early decision program and thus were spared from applying to the rest of the schools on their list, which allowed them an unexpectedly gentle process.   And then there are the rest of us who were not so lucky.
I, like many of my unfortunate classmates, did not apply early decision but did apply to many schools, and with robust supplements at that.  My college application process was long, laborious, and extremely unpleasant.   
I understand now why senioritis is an epidemic at PV.  It is not that we second-semester seniors are lazy; we are just, for the time being, physically and mentally incapable of doing hard work.  Applying to colleges temporarily depleted my stores of studiousness, motivation, creativity, organization, decisiveness, and diction. I am shell-shocked from the college application process, and I need this semester to relax and recover.  
The essays were the most labor-intensive and painful part of the process.  Every school required new essays in addition to the ones I had written already for the Common Application, which, when one is applying to around a dozen schools, add up.  And these were not easy essays.  They made me stop and think about what I want to do with my life, where I want to spend the next four years, and what makes me tick.  Many people, mostly parents, consider all that required soul-searching to be a rewarding part of the college application process, but I think that schools expect the souls of seventeen year-olds to bear more fruit than we really have to offer.
Then there is the pressure to make an application perfect.  I had myself wound up to worry that one small mistake could ruin my chances at a school.  If I had a nickel for every time I print previewed and then obsessed over every last detail of the Common Application and the schools’ individual supplements, I would have enough nickels to pay for full four-year tuition at a private school.
I thought I was finished with the dreadful ordeal of applying to college on December 29, when I hit “submit” for the last time, but alas, the process drags on for me until April, by which time I will have heard from all of the schools to which I applied.  Waiting for results is almost as unbearable as applying…almost.