When I heard that the last movie of the To All the Boys series, Always and Forever, would be coming out on February 12th, I made a mental note to reserve the night for watching it. I wasn’t expecting much more than a cute and feel-good movie. However, I found myself in tears only halfway through the movie. It really struck a chord in me, bringing me right back to when I was applying to colleges.
Lara Jean Covey and Peter Kavinsky were planning to attend Stanford together and pursue a life together far beyond the halls of high school, but this plan did not go as planned. Kavinsky already had his acceptance letter to Stanford in hand, but Lara Jean was still awaiting her decision. The stakes are very high when applying to college as it is, adding in a significant other to the mix makes the decision process even more difficult.
After Lara Jean found out she was rejected from Stanford, her high school went on a field trip to New York City and LJ found herself on a tour of NYU, which was conveniently one of the colleges she had applied to. She had never thought that New York City would be the place for her, but the more time she spent reminiscing on her trip to the city, the more she knew she was a city girl. Only this realization did not come easy because Kavinsky was set on her coming to Stanford one way or another.
The scary part of Always and Forever that makes my skin crawl is the huge decision to make their relationship work long distance. It is a huge commitment and it can either go well or fail miserably. Luckily, the fact Lara Jean and Peter were willing to give it a shot was heartwarming and endearing, which made all the difference and ended the movie on a promising beat.
Unless you’ve always been set on one college your entire life, deciding on one college can be an extremely daunting experience. Similar to Lara Jean, I was in a relationship during my senior year of high school with my current boyfriend. We didn’t discuss our college applications with each other to great lengths because we wanted each other to choose the college without the strings of our relationship. However, the strings are always there because no one in a relationship really wants to be thousands of miles away from each other for the first chapter of their adult lives. The college experience is one I always wanted to experience with my boyfriend, even if we were a few miles away, a train away, or even a plane away.
Somehow, my boyfriend and I did end up in New York. I fell in love with Marymount Manhattan College in the city and he decided to attend a college on Long Island. We were only a subway and a train ride away. Even with being so close, everything is changing during the first year of college. It is a year of changing, evolving, self-exploration, and facing fears.
There’s so much uncertainty in the world right now, where most students are doing college online in their childhood homes. I am lucky enough to be somewhat attending college with my boyfriend because he is only a drive away. I think the moral of the story is that some risks are really tough to make, but it only makes us grow as individuals and it helps us discover who we really are, even if some decisions we make are not always and forever.