Nicholas Lofaso, Period 5, 10/28/2020, Day B

 Nicholas Lofaso

October 28, 2020

Day B, Period 5

On Goal Setting & Growth

At this current point in time, what specific goal(s) do you have for yourself? Why?

Right now, I am really just focused on finishing all of my college apps and staying on top of school work. I am applying to 20+ colleges, so I have a lot of supplements to write in the next 2 months. I set a personal deadline of December 23rd to submit my last application because I really want to have a stress-free Christmas and break, so I will have almost no free time over the next few months as I work to finish everything. I’m glad now that I started working on my personal statement over the summer—it took months for me to finalize it, so I can’t imagine the stress I would have been under if I procrastinated until now to write it. 

I submitted my first early action applications over the weekend and it was a great feeling. Seeing the Common App show them as submitted is more motivation to work on the others—making progress makes me want to finish them all. I’ve found the supplements to be much easier to write than the personal statement, too. They are much simpler; they typically follow a similar structure to each other and have a clear question that they want an answer to, unlike the personal statement’s more open-ended structure. A lot of them ask why you’re interested in the school, for example, so I just do some deep research into offerings at the school and connect it back to myself. 

This week, I want to make a schedule for when I’ll write the supplements for each school I apply to. I am totally inefficient when unorganized, so I really need a set plan of action to tackle the 20 essays that need to be written soon. I also have a lot of work for school, so I have to continue to balance both college applications and school. Once application season is over, I plan on taking Christmas break to just relax. It will be the first time in months where I don’t have much to worry about, so I’ll use it to watch any shows I’ve put off and just unwind. By January, I would like to seriously think about my career—there are so many I’m interested in, and I’d like to have it narrowed down much more by the time I have to pick a college. I’m also excited to pick up some new hobbies then—I want to start playing the guitar, get into astrophotography, and cook way more. This excitement for what will come in just a few months is really helping me get through these stressful times. 

How do you demonstrate resilience towards achieving this goal? 

No matter how stressful the whole process of applying to college may be at times, I feel like I have remained relatively calm and dedicated the entire time. There is so much to keep track of now, especially without having people remind us in person because of the pandemic, and there are times where it seems like I’ll never finish everything I have to. I do the best I can though, and it usually works out in my favor—I’ve missed one scholarship deadline, but I think that was the only error I’ve really made so far. The thought of the holidays coming up soon also makes me really excited and means that time will go by relatively quickly, so if I ever feel like this will never be over, I just remember that we really don’t have too long until the holidays and therefore the end of applications. 

How does the world around you affect your perception of this goal?

I feel like school being mostly remote has been both a blessing and a curse when it comes to applying to college. It’s great because I have so much more time to work on apps—I don’t have every class every day, I don’t have to commute, and I have no after school activities to keep me from going home any days. However, it’s also made this whole process kind of lonely. Normally one of the best parts of school is being around other people who are in the same situations as you, but it is not like that this year. We have all this work and stress yet can rarely see our friends or anyone else from school, and all of the fun events planned for the year had to be canceled. I stay focused on the end goal of the whole process, but sometimes it’s hard to do that when you’re on your seventh hour staring at the computer of the day, with still way more to go.