People expect a lot from you. They expect you to be clean, presentable, charismatic, well mannered, have a good taste in fashion/food/music/wine (depending on the occasion), focused, ambitious, intelligent, compassionate, and good-looking in a way that's easy on the eyes (or at least not painful). But if you are lacking in any one of these areas - or, perish the thought, all of them - people will be understanding of your flaws. If you're lucky they might even find them endearing as opposed to completely annoying. That's what's great about people - they're human.

Colleges, by contrast, are not human. They are machines, a system of carefully laid plans and objectives, seeking human bodies to meet their own purposes. Am I alluding to the idea that they are a Matrix-like controlled society? Ha! Colleges are the Matrix, Mr. Anderson. They are not understanding, and they most certainly don't accept your faults as anything but evidence of an inferior person. And of course, they expect ten times more from someone than any mere person ever would. And, once (and if) they decide that you are acceptable to them, they will then demand a large sum of money from you - somewhere between five and twenty times what your best friend would even consider asking you for.

All of this occurred to me while writing my college resume, a document that simplifies life achievements into a format that can be easily read in a few minutes (or in my case, just under thirty seconds, depending on your literacy level in the English language). I haven't done a lot with my life that can be measured with awards or bulleted accomplishments. Yeah, okay, I wrote a book, I've written for The Tattoo, and I've done some other things of menial accomplishment, like track for a brief couple months during my freshman year, and I've kept my grades decent through my three years of academic servitude at Terryville High.

But other areas that I'm lacking in are glaringly obvious. I haven't been in a lot of clubs or school organizations, mostly because I find them pointless. Sports are near nonexistent, besides the tennis matches that I use to play with drug addicts in my neighborhood. I'm a writer by both interest and trade, but no one has bothered to give me a ton of awards for that besides a couple for some newspaper articles. No one has yet hailed me as being a literary genius, a revolutionary philosopher - nothing I've said has wound up on an obnoxiously colored poster that's hanging in somebody's classroom (even though I once told my sophomore English teacher that he should put "GIVE UP" in huge bold letters across one of his walls). The qualities of my character are not apparent in anything I've done. There's no sarcasm scholarship; there aren't any certificates for being the class clown. To date I haven't gotten anything more than a "Dap that, Stefan" for one of my witty comebacks to people's stupid comments.

What if we could put the clever phrases we've come up with on our resumes? I'm the inventor of such classics as, "It's not cheating - it's cooperative learning," and the popular, "Keep the Faith, Fight the System, Drink Responsibly" (as well as the slightly less popular, "Keep it clean, Keep it safe, Keep it vaginal").

I don't hold a job to speak of, and I don't plan to for at least another five years. I might have been able to say that "at least I have my health" a few years ago, but today? Yeah, right. Kids who smoke a pack a day could probably beat me in a foot race. I run from one end of my school's hallways to the other and my breathing doesn't go back to normal for fifteen minutes.

The only consolation is that just about everyone else I know is in the same boat with me - a small, cramped boat, with several conspicuous leaks. Coolness is everything in high school, but it's not a guaranteed way out. Popularity points can't be cashed in for financial aid. No matter how awesome your car or clothes are, they won't make good subjects for college essays or interview topics. Your Gothic affiliation with Lucifer won't impress anybody, to say the least. The admission officer isn't going to look at your number of kills on Halo 2 and say, "Well, at least you're dedicated to something." No friggin' way.

If nothing else, our ability to get into college puts all of us flawed humans on the same playing field. It lumps us together with the same sentiment:

We're so screwed.