This week, we bring to you a brand new blog: The College Conundrum, written by senior Shensi Ding. Every Wednesday, she’ll post on the highs and lows of college application season, from essay to submission to the nerve-wracking wait until that letter or email arrives. For this first post, a reflection on finally pressing submit.

“Submit” – the text that ominously lurks in a large square button on the end of every online application. A couple weeks ago, I finally removed that annoying button by pressing submit.

After finishing junior year, I had thought about the upcoming college application season; I promised myself that I wouldn’t be a slacker and that I would work on my applications during the last month of summer.

With the help of my parents’ urging, I finished my Common Application long essay by mid-August. When I accomplished this milestone, I gave myself a week to relax and promised to finish my applications in the first month of school so that the weeks before the deadline would be a breeze for me.

Sadly (and predictably), this never happened.

I still had a lot more work to do, and I grossly underestimated the amount of time that it would take. Procrastination and its lovely power took over me, and soon school started.

Classes, volleyball and other extra-curricular activities sucked my time up like a tornado. The first two months of senior year were passing by quickly, and the next thing I knew, I had a mere two weeks left to edit my writing into a somewhat intelligent-sounding essays. Obviously, I needed to get to work.

During that last week before the November 1^st deadline, it seemed like the world was against me sending in my early application. I had tests, papers, concerts, and games all stuffed into one week. I barely had time to finish all of my homework and projects, let alone finish my college applications.

When that awful week finally ended, I knew what I had to do. I needed to lock myself in my room with my computer and get the job done. And that’s exactly what I did.

The next day, after polishing my essays for a couple more hours, it was finally time to press send.

Surprisingly, it was incredibly hard to do so. I was unable to move on for fear of immediately finding a mistake after sending in my application, so I abused the link that would allow me to see the final version of my entire application by pressing it a countless number of times.

After a while, I realized that I wasn’t making any more edits and that it was truly time to submit. Finally, my cursor hovered over the “Submit” button, and with a click, my application was in.

That feeling of horror that I had expected never came. (Although I did end up finding a mistake – I forgot to check one my extra-curricular activities as something I would like to continue in college.) All I felt was relief.

As a reward, I granted myself a week or two to ignore my college applications. In other words: Haagen-Dazs ice cream by my side while watching reruns of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

Seniors: did you apply early anywhere? When did you finish your applications?  And underclassmen: what are your thoughts on the college process? Leave comments below!