Auto Pilot

Do you ever find yourself in a rut? Going through the actions of your everyday life without paying much attention to the details. Without really stopping to smell the reasons. Without listening to what your own voice sounds like? And then, all of a sudden, it's like someone stuck you in a vat of boiling water and just for a moment you are totally alert. You see everything, you know you're talking but don't even recognize your own voice...it's hard to believe that you're actually living.

I just had one of those moments.

Over the past 8 months or so I've been having them every once in a while. And when I do this temporary wake-up, I don't believe that I'm actually living. That this is my life and that I'm actually doing something every second of everyday of my entire life. It almost frightens me to wake up because I'm so used to going with the flow, of just being in my bubble.

When I go off auto pilot, I get this temporary moment where I feel like I don't even want to live anymore. This isn't my life, is it? I mean, I'm not complaining about my life at this time or anything...but waking up and seeing where I am just doesn't flow for some reason.

I know I'm probably sounding like someone who's espcaped from an insane asylum over the past few posts. I can't help that. After all, we're all just a little crazy aren't we?

What I'm trying to say by all of this is that maybe we need to wake up from our cruise control every once in a while. Need to put our feet on the gas peddle, take control of the wheel, and get to where we need to be.

Anyways...what's been up with me over the last few days...?

Sunday night I couldn't sleep. So what do I do when it's 2 AM and I'm wide awake? Fill out the application for the Walt Disney World College Program, of course.

This is something I've been debating on doing over the past 6 months or so. When I started off at my community college in the fall, still very bitter about having graduated high school as I had, I was bound and determined to get outta here as fast as possible. Disney College Program was gonna be my one-way ticket out. However, I didn't meet some of the requirements for the Spring semester so i was stuck once more. I set my College Program date as the first week of June...at least inside my own mind.

But then life happened. I started to enjoy school (itself, not my particular school). I applied for several 4 year universities. I fell in love with almost all of them when I visited over winter vacation. And I learned about their study abroad programs that interested me more than the College Program. Instead of Walt Disney World, I started setting my sights on school.

Why, then, did I apply for the College Program?

To understand we must go back to my first whack at going to universities. I got into all 3 that I applied to, however I only really loved 1. So I set my sights on going there and all was ok. And then the day before graduation, they sent out the financial aid package and it was over my budget. Waaaaaaaay over my budget. About 30,000$ worth. One of the colleges I had already withdrawn my application from, and the school that I desperately loved had to go into that pile as well. Which left one...a university upstate that I desperately deplored. I went to orientation, got a class schedule, and went through the normal pre-student process--but I was still heartsick over my "dream school". So a month before school started I withdrew and chose to stay home. Maybe a mistake on my part, maybe not.

And now I have 3 schools that I really want to go to...but getting in as a transfer is much more difficult than as a freshman. So chances are slim, but could be in my favor.

I applied for the College Program because I didn't want a repeat of last year. I did not want to fall in love with a school, not be able to go, and then be stuck making mistake after mistake of school choices. If I don't get in, then the Disney College Program is a good back-up...even if that does mean I have to submit applications for schools for a 3rd time and most likely be about 2 years behind in school.

Life is hard. Life as a college student is harder.

--Kendra