I used to see college admissions the same way I used to see high school, with underlying apprehension. When I was a fifth grader with too many books and no older siblings, I thought that high school was some sort of hellish environment where anyone not on the football team was cruelly and frequently slushied. (I think it also had to do with an overabundance of Glee episodes on Hulu.)

Of course, I realized by the time I was in middle school that not all high schoolers did drugs and got tattoos. Likewise, I realized this year that college admissions days aren’t necessarily the neverending nightmare that they were portrayed as on Harker Confessions Facebook page, with nicknames like Trauma Thursday and Cryday Friday.

And yet, there’s still that background hum of anxiety that permeates my thoughts. I look at the upperclassmen who skip lunch to nap in Main and think, “Will that be me?” I watch seniors frantically refreshing their emails on admission days and think, “Is that who I’ll become?”

The truth is, in the same way that I wonder if people are hatching plans to douse me in icy beverages, I worry about college applications. Not about where I’ll get in, but about what the process will do to me. I wonder if I’ll crack under the pressure, or if I’ll be forced to sacrifice my social life. Most of all, I fear what the ruthless elimination game will do to my friendships. What if my friends and I want to go to the same place, but only one of us is accepted? If it’s me, will I lose a friend? If it’s not me, will I be a big enough person to be a friend?

My mother has always said, “I know you’ll get in somewhere great, I just don’t know its name yet.”

Despite all the jokes my family makes about Stanford being our religion, the Stanford pennant has never represented a pressure, external or internal, to go there. I hang it on my desk because it reminds me that Stanford educations have built my family up from a small village in China in two generations, because it demonstrates a proud legacy of hard work, and because it proves to me that any college education is an immeasurably powerful tool. Maybe I’ll go to Stanford. Statistically, I probably won’t. And frankly, I’m okay with that.

Now I know that as I progress through high school, my stress-free outlook will at least partially disappear. I’ll stress about my self-worth, my grades, and whether I’ll go to the college I want. I’ll collect APs, formulate strategies, and “play the game.” And I’ve accepted that. I just hope I don’t lose myself along the way.