The college map is everywhere. In the last issue of each year, The Winged Post publishes a college map outlining the confirmed college plans of each senior who chooses to report where they committed.

And each year, as soon as the college map is published, it’s everywhere:  displayed in the middle school library, posted around the Upper School campus, and even pinned up in some of the homes of soon-to-be Harker upperclassmen.

For three weeks, our adviser has been fielding calls from parents, some of whose students are not even at the Upper School yet, asking when it will be published and whether or not they can reserve a copy (they can’t). As we finished up the paper on production nights, we watched parents check the news boxes and disappointedly discover that the college map was not out yet. And today we’ll watch countless people open the paper, pull out and scour the college map and ignore the other 20 pages.

Such events occur annually, reflecting the fact that the college map has become a symbol of academic achievement and a venerated ideal of arbitrary success.

As a publication, we debated whether or not to even publish a college map this year. The perpetuation of the stigma that the prestige of the college you attend somehow defines your high school experience was serious reason to cut the entire spread.  Ultimately, we decided to keep the map because we believe that it celebrates the next chapter in the seniors’ lives and congratulates them on all of their high school accomplishments. Not including it would take some of that recognition away from them.

With that being said, we see a strong need to remind the community that the placement of their names on the college map does not even begin to represent the seniors’ entire time on campus or the personal growth they have experienced over the last four years.

A high school experience includes so much more than just getting into a college. Yes, college is an important fact of teen life. However, we must remember that the memories and bonds created through years of collaboration, friendship and recreation cannot be found on the two broadsheet pages that most take home.

The Harker community has often expressed discomfort with the stereotype that other schools assign to us: that we’re all college-obsessed, that our GPAs are our only motivations, that we lack personal agency. But every time we idolize the college map, every time we let the result eclipse the process, we add a little more validity to these stereotypes.

Each of us has a choice. We can buy into the fervor surrounding the college map, make incomplete judgments about the seniors and corroborate the stereotype.

Or we can take this moment to congratulate and celebrate the achievements of all the seniors for those late nights, “eureka” moments and experiences that have shaped them into who they are.

Each senior is so much more than his or her college. Each of us is so much more than the stereotypical Harker student. Now is the time to prove it.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on May 13, 2015.