It’s 8 am on a Monday morning in April and you open Instagram for the first time. Three new college decisions have been released on the B-CC Class of 2024 College Decisions page since you checked last night. However, this isn’t unusual as in the last few months your Instagram has been swarming with posts from this page alone. You put your phone down and sigh as you still bear with the fact that you’re stuck between deciding where you want to spend the next four years of your life, and are envious of your peers who know where they are going in the fall. This scene may look familiar for plenty of B-CC seniors who have many difficult decisions to make before May 1st quickly comes around.
As one approaches the spring semester of their senior year, it is not unusual to experience an increased amount of anxiety and impatience surrounding college decisions. However, seeing college acceptances and decisions from outside peers through Instagram may create an unhealthy environment for some students. B-CC Senior Paolo Mantassas had much to say regarding the social media aspect of college decisions. “Social media forces a comparison that constantly makes me feel inadequate, and I feel a pressure to decide quicker when I see these posts flooding in but in reality, I have no idea where I want to go,” commented Mantassas.
This increased pressure to post and decide one’s next steps in life only creates toxic habits and a loss of self-respect as students begin to feel behind compared to their peers and question their talents and capabilities. Mantassas added, “I feel like I should be excited to decide like everyone else, but I just don’t.” The stressful decisions seniors face during this time period should never cause regrets of any sort, let alone uncertainty about their abilities and what they have going for them in the near future. Mantassas said the internet has made the research process of college decisions much easier, yet the social media attention has made him more focused on the image than he had hoped.
B-CC Senior Sophia Shuman said, “Every time I have opened Instagram in the last week there’s been a new decision post. This honestly makes me feel very exposed and I begin to compare myself to others going to big state schools because I feel like I’m several steps behind.”
Both Mantassas and Shuman have agreed they feel pressured by their friends to post as soon as possible, which only adds to the amount of internal stress they already put up with. This external pressure has persuaded Shuman to slow down and not feel rushed to post on the page, even after she has already committed for a little while.
May 1st is coming up faster than some might have hoped, meaning hundreds of B-CC students have minimal weeks remaining to determine where they will journey off to in the fall. Nonetheless, wherever they may go, we know they will do great things. Good luck Class of 2024!
