Cool Halloween trick to play on your senior friends for October: without warning, utter the words “college applications” and watch the light slowly die in their eyes. They are the bane of every senior’s existence for at least the first semester of the school year; personally, I get stressed just thinking about the number of essays, short answers, and applications I still have to type up. And along with the stress of college applications, comes also the added headache of financial aid and scholarship applications as well as the constant exertion of classes, extracurriculars, and maintenance of social life.

It really is enough to make you lose your mind. Just yesterday, I cried for fifteen minutes because I couldn’t figure out how to change a sentence from passive to active voice. Not my best moment, at all.

However, the more I think about it, the more it seems as though everyone–myself definitely included–stresses out entirely too much about the application process. We slave over our essays, conjuring up pseudo-philosophical answers to questions most adults don’t even think to ask themselves and anxiously comparing our progress with our peers, if only for the slight reassurance that everyone is struggling in the same way. Hitting the submit button on the application page seems like signing away a part of your soul, baring it for the prying, judgemental gaze of the esteemed admissions officers of this nation’s higher education institutions.

At the end of the day, though, there is no such thing as a “bad” college and there really is no reason to whip yourself into a frenzy. Of course, it is disappointing if you don’t get accepted into your dream school, but no matter where you end up going, you’re going to get a phenomenal education. You’re going to meet new people, experience amazing things, and continue to discover all the things that make you, you.

So put down your pencil and log off that Common Application window. Take a nap, read a book, ride a bike, go to the gym with your friends. Take some time for yourself, to de-stress, to reevaluate, to realize that this doesn’t define you or determine the course of your life. Wherever you go, you’re going to do amazing things.