Andrew Rubinshteyn, Period 8, 11/1/2021

 Andrew Rubinshteyn, Period 8, 11/3/2021

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

At the moment, the only specific goal I have for myself is to do my utmost for my applications for universities. To my detriment, I spent the summer largely slacking off as far as they’re concerned, and the November 1st deadlines caught me off guard. For every university I was applying to on the 1st, I was totally unprepared, except for Cornell. I have some other deadlines coming up within the next month, and I want to be better prepared for those in order to not have to rush supplementals, because rushing anything always comes through in the product. I feel it’s important to show off my best in my applications because for years now, I’ve been conditioned by my family to believe in the importance of going to an amazing university, not that I ever disagreed with that mentality. Now that the time is here to put my best foot forward, that’s my primary focus.

How do you demonstrate resilience towards achieving this goal? (or these goals?)

Initially, when I was just writing the personal statement, I was putting in a lot of time and effort into it. If I recall correctly, I had 9 drafts, all from scratch, that were 1500 words each, before I settled on one to rewrite and shorten down to 650. Then I did the same with my Cornell supplementals, in which I really tried to perfect my writing to sound engaging and convey my points within the 200 word limits for both. However, after that I started slacking on the other schools. Now, starting today, I spent a lot of time on supplementals for a specific university. I composed initial drafts for the 6 Princeton supplementals, and did a revision of each. While they still need work, I have a clear game plan of how to wrap them up. I plan to keep that up for supplementals for the 16 schools I have yet to apply to, and that’ll give me the best opportunity to show off in my application and achieve my goal.

How does the world around you affect your perception of this goal? (or these goals?)

As far as the people around me affecting my thoughts on my situation, it’s a complete split. On one hand, there are a lot of people who didn’t do what I did, and stayed on top of their college applications as a whole. On the other hand, there’s a huge group of my peers that are also scrambling to get their supplements together last-minute for early deadlines. Overall, because I feel like most of the people I interact with on the daily are in the same boat as me, I don’t think it’s made me feel much that I didn’t already feel, other than a sense of solidarity with everyone else. If I felt that most people were significantly more prepared, I probably would’ve felt more angry at myself, and felt my goal was significantly more unachievable than I feel about it right now, but I see everyone else putting in the work, and myself too by now, so I know it is.