When one thinks about a college counseling office, particularly at a school like Choate, what is most striking? Is it the statistics of the year’s acceptance and enrollment at the top schools? Is it the loads of paperwork and college propaganda that seem to fill every corner of every desk? Or is it the mass of juniors and seniors constantly milling around, looking desperately for consolation and advice?

I remember that I panicked the first time I walked into the College Office. It was during the spring of my sophomore year, and I only needed to sign up for my first AP exam. As I navigated my way to Ms. Rodenhizer’s office, I got a foreboding sense of the overwhelming burden that the college process inevitably brings to feeble-minded students like myself. The smell of pre-disappointment and inadequacy enveloped my unprepared self as I nervously eyed the college process guidelines and paperwork, all seemingly written in a foreign language. I quickly signed that first of many signatures to come, and then gladly returned to my state of blissful ignorance that sophomore spring brings—the calm before the storm.

Less than a year later, I found myself in Ms. Schulz’s office for the first time, not knowing exactly what to expect. I had no idea what the difference between early action and early decision was, or how I would ever find that fabled “right fit” from the thousands and thousands of schools around the world. In short, I fully expected that I would need to latch onto Ms. Schulz, trusting that her abundant experience would help me navigate the murky waters of college admissions.

Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago when I found out that she, along with three of her colleagues in the college office-- Mr. Jacoby, Mr. Olins, and Mr. Timlin,-- were joining this year’s junior class in their own search for that “right fit.” They were “moving on.” As she told me the sad news of her departure from Choate, I could almost feel my entire college search going down the drain. Needless to say, I was devastated, like the majority of my classmates who were to lose their current counselor for a completely new one next fall. How could I possibly ask a complete stranger to read over my college essays next year, while she was still getting acquainted with the Choate environment and forty new counselees?

As Ms. Schulz told me about her replacement, using words like “knowledgeable” and “enthusiastic,” the initial anxiety and doubt began to fade. I began to question the validity of my feeling of abandonment. She, like anyone who’s been in the middle of the college process, was weighing many factors at once to come to a decision that would be tough to make regardless of the consequences. And this can be said of any of the four counselors leaving the office next year. They are not simply abandoning Choate students—particularly the current juniors—to add a new dimension of difficulty to the whole process. Contrary to popular belief, the personal life of a college counselor does not always revolve around the highly stressful affair that is the Big College Hunt.

That said, I think the school could do far more for its college office than what has been done in the past, at least in my time here. For a start, both counselors and counselees would benefit greatly from a chance to meet each other outside the context of the college process at least once prior to junior winter. Too many students, including myself, come into junior spring with only the slightest idea of the crucial role of the college counselors. I remember distinctly the sensations I felt in my first exposures to both admission and the college process—the feeling of security and confidence at Second Visits and the feeling of blind ignorance and panic at my first College Fair.

Coming from a public school district where juniors were more likely to see Halley’s Comet than their assigned college counselor, I believe that Choate is blessed to have among its faculty ranks such a full staff of highly trained and eager professionals. Too many students and parents believe that the college officers are merely vessels that are obliged to bring Choate graduates to the best undergraduate shores. They see the college process as one big rat race, forgetting the personal aspect of it that makes it what it should be—a chance for us students to learn about ourselves and use that new knowledge and self-appreciation to find the right fit. And if high school juniors are still discovering themselves, what’s stopping college counselors from doing the same?