reddit 上的一个贴
an endless feast i keep choking on
I feel like college applications are like a dinner that never ends. You sit down thinking it’ll be a quick meal, a little intro, some activities, a dash of personality But no. No, it’s not simple. You start eating, and you can’t stop. The plate just refills, over and over, a never-ending buffet of bullshit. Essays, prompts, word counts "Tell us about your leadership experience!" Oh, I’m leading, alright. Leading myself straight into madness.
You chew, chew, chew, hoping for an end, but the plate just laughs at you. You try to swallow your sanity, but it gets stuck in your throat because it never ends. The meal stretches out forever, and the dessert they promised “Just finish this, and you’ll get the reward!” But the dessert? IT DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a death march disguised as an “opportunity.”
I’ve tasted rejection. I’ve tasted burnout. I’ve tasted the soul-crushing realization that nothing I write will ever be good enough. And it tasted good. You know why? Because at least the burnout is real. At least the stress is tangible. Unlike this mythical dessert, this magical acceptance letter they dangle in front of you, saying, "Just one more draft! One more recommendation! One more rewrite!"
I’m chewing on my identity, slicing it up into bite-sized chunks, feeding it to these faceless admissions officers, hoping they’ll like the flavor. But no matter how many pieces I serve, the plate keeps refilling. “Tell us more about you!” What more can I say? I’ve diced my soul into 650 words and I’m still here, gnawing at the edges of my existence like some kind of rabid dog. Oh, they’ll love that, won’t they?
I start to wonder—maybe the dinner is the point. Maybe dessert is a lie. Maybe I’m supposed to sit here forever, drowning in these never-ending prompts, these endless drafts, until I forget what life was like before this endless, torturous feast. Maybe college isn’t even real. Maybe this is all just some elaborate joke, some kind of purgatory where I write my own obituary one essay at a time.
My mind is turning into mashed potatoes, and they want me to keep going. Keep serving up pieces of myself. I’m not even sure what I’m serving anymore, but they keep asking, so I keep giving.
Maybe I’ll never leave this table. Maybe I’ll be here forever, endlessly writing, endlessly editing, endlessly tasting this nightmare of expectations. I’ll never get dessert, because dessert isn’t real. It was never real.
I’m stuck here, in this eternal dinner.
