Between the many spring semester activities — prom, Tales from the Crypt, reunion or alumni weekends and extracurricular competitions at MSMS — there was another event designed to select prospective students. Interview Day for the class of 2018 was held April 2.

Prospective students, who have already been invited based off of materials from their written applications, had the opportunity to see campus for possibly the first time. For emissaries, this was a day to introduce MSMS to interested students and family members; for current juniors, this is a first glance at future classmates.

As a non-emissary who is destined to be this incoming class of 2018’s “grand-senior,” Interview Day is more of a welcome (yet unwelcome) reminder that I am almost finished with high school.  While I am glad that, by chance of birth, I managed to snag what I think is one of the (rhythmically) better years for graduating college, the Class of 2020, I am honestly a bit flustered over the idea of graduating and going to college.

Aside from bringing about my nervous Peter Pan-esque dislike of growing up, Interview Day brings memories of my own application and admissions process to MSMS. After receiving a “summons” to the class of 2016 Interview Day, I prepped like I do for most interviews: I did not do anything until about 3 minutes before walking in the door. Mentally tensing myself with frantic half-planning of answers for crazily-imagined questions, I waited outside the door in a hallway in Hooper that is now beyond familiar to me, criticizing myself for choosing the earliest interview possible.  

I actually have little recollection of the interview, its questions or my responses, but I apparently did not make many mistakes beyond looking sweaty and nervous. During the course of the interview, I do remember transitioning from a deer-in-the-headlights look to a more conversational human interviewee, as my interviewers remained calm, approachable and continued to reassure me that I did not sabotage myself by finishing the required questions in less than five minutes.  

I assume that after the interview, placement tests and campus tour fraught with embarrassing questions from my parents, I met and spoke with the people I now call classmates; but, I honestly remember very little in that blur of an afternoon. While I did earn the chance to attend MSMS partially through my interview and I learned to begin preparing at least 15 minutes in advance for interviews, the hot April Interview Day of 2014 was a haze of new faces, environments and encounters to me.

In several days, during final application review, future MSMS students will be chosen based on their merits, application submissions and interview presence (across a spectrum of cool tact to sweaty earnestness similar to my own).  After receiving the results, members of the MSMS Class of 2018 will visit campus on April 30 during New Student Orientation, another day that is now little more than a blur of bewilderment and wonder to me.