This post is not for the folks who just got in and are ecstatic and coming here for sure. This isn’t for the EDs, or for the students whose first choice was Hopkins from the start.

To you guys: Congratulations! It’s all over for you guys. Throw your textbooks and homework to the ground for one night, celebrate with your family and friends, and start shopping for blue jay gear. You did it!

This is instead for the folks who just went through a rough day of college admissions and are now looking at their depleted list of colleges and thinking, “What do I do?”

Before you take out a romcom and snuggle up to some Ben and Jerry’s, and before you successfully convince yourself that you’re doomed and that the college process is terrible, listen to what I have to say.

But uh, it’s gonna be a long one.

I wrote this post for another college blog, The Collegiate Blog. If you’ve read it before, I apologize.

A year ago, I was sitting in my AP English class, my last class on Thursdays, after a long day of college admissions decisions. I got rejection after rejection, waitlist after waitlist, and it looked like all was over for me. The last one I was waiting on was a school called Johns Hopkins University, which I had disregarded because it was in Baltimore, a city I had heard terrible things about (in hindsight, I shouldn’t have based my opinion of a city on a TV show, but I digress.)

I’m not going to lie and say that Hopkins was first on my list, or even second, or even fifth. It was a school I had disregarded because my mother had, for twelve years, trained me to believe that I wanted to be part of a league named after a vine plant without realizing what that actually meant. I applied because I had gone to a summer program run by Hopkins that had changed my life. I didn’t want to go to school in Baltimore, because my cousin had gone to MICA, and told me all sorts of awful things about the school and about how terrible it was.

I found out about the last college rejection at the end of AP English, and it was too much. I burst into tears when my tea-equipped, snarky, not-prepared-for-a-teenage-girl-to-burst-into-tears teacher, after class, asked me offhandedly how the college process was going for me.

A couple hours later, I got the e-mail from Johns Hopkins. Congratulations in the subject, no “We regret to inform you” in the first paragraph, and a “buy a 2016 t-shirt!” quip at the bottom.

In the end, my choice came down to two schools, UC Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins; a university with a great Chemistry program that was an hour and a half from home in a city that I loved with people that I loved, or a university with a great engineering program that was across the country in a city about which I knew nothing.

I tried talking to my advisers, my parents, my friends, and my teachers. I visited Cal and stayed with one of my best friends, Abby, who I would have loved to gone to school with. I talked to people in the chem department, the engineering department, and members of an a cappella group. I visited Hopkins during SOHOP, and it was rainy and dreary, and I knew nobody. I talked to professors who talked about things that I didn’t understand, talked to current and admitted students, and members of an a cappella group.

And I did this begrudgingly, frankly, because I was still banking on getting off of waitlists at schools I was SURE I wanted to attend. I sent letters of recommendation, updated resumes, letters about why I wanted to attend to those schools, and put off my decision as long as I could.

I realized I’d have to make some sort of decision, so I tried the cheesy “flip a coin” trick. It landed on Cal, my heart sank and my stomach turned, and with a shaky smile, I told my friend “I guess I’m going to Cal?”

That night, after dinner, I accepted my admittance to Hopkins.

And here I am.

It’s difficult, to say the least.I joke about hanging out in the library, but I’m pretty sure I spend upwards of four hours here a night, and have fears of losing friends once I stop being in classes with them. I’m a member of an a cappella group, which sucks up time I didn’t think I would miss. After a spur of the moment decision to rush, and going through the rush process, I joined a sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and that takes up more time. I feel like I’m constantly working to make up for work I didn’t get done before, and weekends are spent, for the most part, sleeping and making up for the late nights during the week.

No really though, I'm seriously there way too much.

Come on. Look at my shirt. I freaking love it here now.

So take it from me folks- It’s gonna be okay. no matter what happens. If you get into your dream school? Congrats. If you don’t? You’ll be happy at your eventual school I promise.