Dear Common App,

We haven't known each other long, but already I feel a bond between us. Whenever I have a free moment, I think of you. I pull you up on my laptop and just stare at you, so overwhelmed at your breadth and depth that I do not even know where to start. My column of check marks is the only testament to the small dent I have made in you -- your mysterious questions are still just that, a mystery.

You hold the key to my future; you allow me self-reflection, help me to analyze every word I've ever thought and give me the means to classify myself in a million different demographics. Somehow, I have boiled down 18 years of life into one, 650-word personal statement that I fed right into you. You know me better than anyone else.

But I feel like, perhaps, we are not right for each other. For starters, $65/application is so expensive; what do you even use that money for? Isn't that a lot to just send my questions somewhere else? Then you limit me to 150-word answers, sometimes even down to 50. If you're not going to listen to me and listen to ALL of me, why do I even bother answering your questions? And then there's the nagging - I log in, and my deadlines are red with clocks on them. I get it! You want attention! But you don't do anything to actually demand action - try emails, or texts or something. You constantly ask for my contact info, so I know you have it.

Ugh. But I am obsessed with you. I have dreams of you, clicking submit on my final application and seeing that beautiful line of green checkmarks. I see red text and I think instantly of your logo, and I now try your password in every other field that I need a password for - even that email which I have had since age 12 and definitely should know the password for. You're all I talk about with friends - where are they applying? ED or EA, or regular? And you are the one tab I never close. I could never.

Yet you stress me out; you're never changing, yet I can't ever guess what is next. I can't read you; your deep questions like "Why NYU?" and "Tell UVA what your favorite word is" are too much for me. And I feel like our relationship is almost too much at this point - you're constantly asking me for things, and I am relying on outside sources to get the end acceptances or rejections - you can't even follow through!

Maybe we need a break. This is too much - after November 1st, we're going to have to stop this for a while. I need to focus on my other homework and stop living an obsessive fantasy that is never going to work out...

But, of course, I'll see you January 1st.

Love always,

A high school senior