It's Sunday, February 17th at 4:00 in the afternoon. I've just gotten back from my Spring Break college-hunting trip in the Northeast. Exhausted from countless hours of driving and alarms set to 6:30 pretty much every single morning, I collapse onto the couch and nonchalantly check my email for anything I might have missed over the break. Urban Outfitters: "Last chance to get free shipping on all orders," delete. Flickr: "New photos from amkayla," delete. Collegeboard: "The Official SAT Question of the Day," delete. Mr. Graf: "Irish Network New Orleans' scholarship program," click.
The whole school year I had been searching for some kind of summer program to participate in, and none of them really struck my fancy. This one, however, stood out to me for some reason. Well, actually not just for some reason. My family heritage traces back to Ireland, and I feel like this connection is what made UCD's program appealing to me.
At first I thought, How am I going to get all this paperwork filled out, bring it to a lawyer to get notarized, figure out what I am going to write about for my essay, write the actual essay, AND ask someone to look over it with me all in the next 24 hours?? There was no way that an essay written in such a short time period would get me anywhere. However, it sounded like too much of an incredible opportunity to simply pass it up and say that 24 hours was not enough time. I could do it. So I ignored all the schoolwork I still had left to finish for the next day and began to fill out the application. I may have had to pull an almost-all-nighter to finish everything, but I'm pretty sure anyone would say that it was worth it.
It's the next day. I'm sitting on a bench outside Newman waiting for my mom to come with the sealed paperwork, 4:08 p.m., about an hour before everything is due. 4:09 p.m. 4:10 p.m. I'm beginning to get restless. Suddenly, my mom pulls up. Scrambling to the car, I yell a quick "Thanks, mom! Love you!" and then run back inside to the nearest scanner. My hands are almost shaking. I have to get this in on time. I fumble for the flash drive, plug it in to my computer, and open up my email. 4:27 p.m. Looking over my essay one last time, I place all the scanned documents into one email, and hover my finger over the left clicker. Let's just check it over one more time, I think, paranoid that I may have overlooked a mistake. But time is running out. Forcing myself to just click the button already, I send the email off to the Irish Network, my hopes and prayers not too far behind.
Lesson learned: 24 hours is always enough time.
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