I thought I figured it out early. I thought I had my path planned out. It isn't until much later that I actually saw the problem within that thought process. Like tens of thousands of high school seniors each year, I applied early decision to my top choice university. You can ask anyone, I would not shut up about this college. All I talked about for months before admission decisions came out was how beautiful the flowers were (I know, the flower thing was quite irrelevant), how I would be so happy to move down south into some warmer weather, and that my favorite author who won the Presidential Medal of Freedom taught at this school.

On October 23rd, 2016 a letter from got accepted in October and I felt genuinely ecstatic. I ended up being the one to make the Instagram page and the Facebook page for the class of 2021 as well.

On December 21, 2016, that said university revoked my acceptance.

You might ask, what did you do? What happened?

No, I didn't get suspended, I didn't fail my classes.

My mental health was spiraling out of control a while before my relationship with this university that I wanted to be a part of so badly ended. I'll be honest, I've struggled with staying healthy mentally for a long time. It felt like my mind would shut down irregularly, and I just could not find the ability to function properly sometimes.

My thought process consisted of thinking that if I continued to work so hard and got the chance to move far from home (this university), I could run away from all my stressors and maybe I wouldn't struggle as much anymore.

Yeah, I didn't say that my plan was a perfect one.

In this case, I missed chunks of school and switched out of calculus simply because I was not in school and attending classes enough. After I withdrew, I contacted this university just to let them know that my schedule changed with the one class. A few days later, I got a couple of rather frantic seeming emails from the admissions officer that represented my state, stating how my decision to drop the class was rushed, and I should absolutely think twice of altering my curriculum and how his/her institution "...has a standard of their admitted students taking the hardest possible classes offered."

I did not want to make the situation more complicated by revealing that I was not attending school as regularly and ended up leaving a class because of my mental health. I didn't usually find myself in a space where I had to justify the reasons for my well-being.

That brings us back to that fateful Wednesday of December 21, 2016. It was around 5:30 and I was volunteering at the food pantry when I received an email with a pdf attached. The email stated how "It is important that we are confident that students we admit will be healthy and happy" and the PDF outlined in a bulleted format why during the reevaluation of my application, the admissions team determined that my "changed" schedule does not demonstrate the appropriate rigor for an incoming student of their university.

Since we're being honest here, let me just say I don't think that this university actually gave a damn about my health.

I can't describe how discouraging that statement felt and how strange it was that a total stranger could judge another individual on their health. Coming from a representative of a highly "ranked" university that many people including myself looked up to as a place where they wanted to spend the next four years of their lives at, I was extremely confused and overwhelmed. I had approximately 9 days to apply to other universities by the January 1st deadline.

I guess the lesson to be learned here is to take things slower and to think things through before making big decisions. I'm not here to preach that everything will work itself out seamlessly or that the end result is going to be "perfect", but I can attest to that everything does happen for a reason.

Ultimately, I would like to thank this university for doing something at first I deemed so "heartless," inconsiderate and rash because otherwise, I would have never ended up at Lehigh.

See? Everything does happen for a reason.