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November 7, 2009

Teen Talk: College Night can be helpful for future

There’s a point in all teens’ lives when they come to the ugly realization that they won’t be able to live off of their parents forever.

No longer will meals be waiting when we get home, still piping hot and actually edible. No more will our clothes magically end up in our rooms, clean and smelling like laundry detergent. Dishearteningly enough, there’s only a limited amount of time left for us to waste all the hot water in our hour-long showers. Soon, we will be on our own, and will have to pay for these necessities all by ourselves.

Enter the inevitable lecture: “If you get into a good college, you will be able to get a good job, and be able to support yourself!” from your parents. This is your cue to roll your eyes and proclaim that you have the rest of your entire high school career to worry about such things. And then you realize, you don’t.

High school graduation isn’t that far away, and by then you’re expected to know where you want to go to college, and what direction you want to take your life.

But how are you supposed to be expected to know these things when you don’t even know how to start a college search? Luckily for you, College Night exists.

For one night in the fall, more than 80 colleges from the northeast are represented at College Night. Each college has its own booth in the Alumni Field House at the State University College at Oneonta.

The room is filled with people from high schools all over the area, bustling about, visiting the booths. At each booth there’s a representative from each college who is responsible for informing visitors about the college and answering any questions they might have.

These representatives are also responsible for being impeccably perky even when the teens they are talking to do not reciprocate the cheerfulness.

However, this liveliness does not go unnoticed.

Representatives make a huge impression on students. In fact, the schools most teens remember from College Night are the ones where the representatives were engaging them in conversation, whether it be about the college they are representing, or being actually interested in how their school year is going so far.

It’s their job to entice you to check out their college, so they might ask questions about your academic and extracurricular interests and show you how you might fit in at their college.

Let’s be real here, everyone likes to talk about himself or herself. It’s the one topic on which we can truthfully say we have a full grasp.

So when the representatives inquire about what your interests are, it’s your chance talk about yourself to someone who is legally obligated to listen. Well, maybe not legally, but close enough.

For those who don’t enjoy the spotlight, don’t fret, because here is your chance to blurt out a three-word answer and then proceed to nod and smile when the representatives link your answer to something at their college. Now you can breathe a sigh of relief, because you’ve done your part.

After the representatives manage to obtain and keep your interest about the college, it’s now the time when they give you all the colorful pamphlets with the pictures of the smiling students having the time of their lives at college.

Then, they will leave you with a card to fill out with all your personal information, so that the college can send you even more colorful pamphlets. But these pamphlets are more than just undersized picture books.

They contain valuable information about the colleges, such as the majors and courses offered there, student activities available, location of the college and surrounding area, and so much more. So take a few minutes to read through them and find out some things you may have missed.

College Night can be an overwhelming experience. That’s why to ease the tension, parents are brought with you to ask the tough questions you wouldn’t have even thought of asking.

Unfortunately, these questions mostly have to do with tuition and financial aid, and mostly evoke threats about scholarships muttered from parent to child.

But this is not a time to worry.

As long as we keep doing our best in school, there’s going to be less to be anxious about when it comes time to send in our applications.

And opportunities like College Night help to make things even easier for high school students.

Adrian Adamo is a junior at Oneonta High School.

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