When I first googled, “Common App” the page that comes up fills me with dread. First off, there’s this huge picture of a smiling woman that takes up all of the screen. Her eyes are closed. She’s listening to music. She looks at peace. Normally I’d be fine with this smiling woman, but not when she’s plastered all over the Common App home page. I don’t hate the Common App home page because it’s scary but because there’s such a huge disconnect between the vibes the Common App homepage is giving off and the burning rollercoaster that represents my emotions throughout the month of October. Also, can we talk about the words on the Common App home page? “Your future starts here,” is displayed in huge white letters in the middle of the home page. And I get that these words are supposed to be inspiring but they just fill me with dread. The idea that someday I’ll graduate from high school, move out from my childhood home, and become an adult with some sort of “future” scares me. I don’t want my future to start yet, I just want to enjoy being an unstressed kid for just a while longer.
What’s the scariest color? Red. R’s are red. Teacher’s grade with a red pen. Red lights are red. And you know what else is red? Common’s app cursed timer from hell. All of the schools you will apply to show up on the “Dashboard” tab of the Common App — like a checklist of sorts. In addition, the due date of applications along with a countdown is displayed on the “Dashboard” tab. And this year’s senior class has made the unfortunate discovery that two weeks before an app is due the countdown turns a bright red. So picture this mostly white page with a few accents of gray. Peaceful, right? Now imagine that same webpage but there’s now there’s this burning red text that says “7 days left until deadline”. And maybe it’s because my blood is 50% caffeine by now or because of the white background, but that red color is scarier than normal. There’s something about the saturation and hue of those words that makes me feel like I’m being judged. Whenever I see that countdown, I’m reminded of the fact that I’m not currently working on my essays. And each day you log on to the common app, this number keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
In the Common App tab, there’s another tab labeled “Writing” where your common app essay goes. Not gonna lie, this tab is the bane of my existence partially because writing essays is hard and partially because the interface just sucks. So after you scroll through a whole entire list of prompts that basically ask you to describe your entire personality and life experience in 650 words, you’ll see this tiny text box where you're expected to write your essay. The worst part of this text box for me is that it’s blank. I’ve spent hours staring at this little blank text box filled completely with unblemished whiteness, and I stress. The textbox’s blankness intimidates me. I type out one sentence in the text box. Then, after staring at the text box for a minute I delete the sentence. And so the cycle continues. And then there’s the interface. First off, when you copy-paste your essay from google docs to the common app, everything becomes bolded. I don’t know why common app does this but I hate it. Secondly, you can’t indent in Common App. Instead, you have to leave a blank line after each of your paragraphs or I guess you can just use the space bar if you’re really dedicated. And all of these little quirks are okay by themselves but by combining these quirks, Common App becomes hell on earth.
So after ranting about Common App for a whole four paragraphs, I feel like I should complement the Common App for something just to be a little nice. Except I can’t think of anything to say so... .the Common App is hell on earth, change my mind. This essay/rant did help me feel less stressed though so everything’s not all bad.
Disclaimer: I don’t know if the Common App counts as an object or animal but I’ve spent enough time on that cursed website that I can definitely write a detailed portrait of it. I’d also like to say that although I rant about Common App a lot, the current version of common app looks so much better than last year’s version, which looked liked it was made in the 90s.
