Like most high school seniors in the U.S. this month, I am in essay hell. With college application deadlines looming, cramming our minds with gobbledegook for the SAT’s, keeping up with nine classes, and co-curricular activities, we are leading a pretty complicated existence. On top of all of that we are being required to write an essay that will give the colleges we are applying to a feel for who we are.

Pure and simple I have no idea how to write an essay that will get me into college.

College essays are a different kind of animal than the classroom essay. While Mr. Danovitch or Ms. Berkey give us guidance, the college essay offers a simple prompt and expects massive creativity while staying within a 500-word parameter.

And of course, nothing we’ve been working on over our now-culminating K-12 career has even suggested that the most important subject to be able to explain is ourselves.

Compared to the college essay, an AP exam is a breeze. The AP exam offers questions that you already know the answers to. In history for example, you structure it around historical facts, add an intro and a conclusion and voila,* the essay is complete and well received. The college essay is more personal. You have to make the reader fall in love with the idea of you at their school.

Tips from experts are a dime a dozen and offer nothing more than conflicting views. Should I start off with an anecdote? Absolutely. Never. Should I use first person? Of course. Never use first person because it is much too informal. I feel like tearing my hair out – but I can only afford to tear a strand or two because with all the stress, my hair is falling out on its very own.

Shalhevet college counselor Dr. Mercer told me there are three things that cause students to go crazy when t comes to the college application process. Two of them are unavoidable and the third is completely up to us.

“One, these types of essays are not the kind of essays that high school students and even adults are really ever trained to do,” said Dr. Mercer. “The second is that it is a high-stakes process, the outcome is a big deal…There is a big feeling of everything being at stake.”

The third reason is that students and parents together are applying to way too many colleges, he said, and getting too caught up in searching for an imaginary grail.

“They are making it a crazy process…,” he said. “People are getting way too caught up in the prestige of the colleges in driving their decisions, and not keeping an open mind to schools that are fantastic, that are just not as well known.

“You do not have to do that,” he sagely continues. “…You don’t choose your friends, and in the future your spouse, based on what other people think. You can do — that but it is not a really good idea.”

In my case, though, it’s not the schools. I’m not applying to a dozen and not one of the schools on my list is an uber-*school like Harvard. I have narrowed my choices to places that probably won’t reject me (even a big guy like myself doesn’t like rejection).

But I still have to write that essay.

So, back to hell. Currently I have three unfinished essays in which I address my concerns about the future, talk about why observing Shabbat keeps me sane, and explain that too many of us are way too depressed. I think each essay makes me sound fearful, neurotic, and depressed myself. But that’s not who I actaully am.

I’m a cuddly teddy bear with a penchant for learning. I play nicely with others and don’t mind taking long walks on the beach. That‘s pretty much it. I look rather decent on paper. My grades are worthy of parental kvelling and I am by no means a slouch when it comes to extra-curricular activities. I’ve achieved quite a lot during my high school career.

This doesn’t make me stand out, but I’ve been lucky: I was raised in a two-parent home in the middle of Beverly Hills and haven’t really had to overcome obstacles like gang violence.

The problem is that achievement, luck and success don’t make you likable. Just ask Mitt Romney.

Still, being me will have to do. For now I can just hope that I get to spend the next four years in the place of my dreams. Maybe Romney will too.