You’ve never stood in a crowded admissions office after touring five colleges in three days, have you? So, I was bored. I was sleep-deprived. And maybe it was not the most super mature thing to do, but it’s not as if anyone consciously noticed. I admit it, I was not standing there with my hands folded, awaiting directions. Or rather, that was not all I was doing.

I was yawning.

Yes, I know, the eighth of the Seven Deadly College Tour Sins. Horror of horrors. But I was bored. And you know that show on TV with the guy with the mustache who does science experiments? Well, he did one to test whether yawns were contagious. And standing there, feeling oh-so-small in this great big building that looked as if it had grown out of the ground, a building that was so sure when I was so completely unsure, I needed to do something. Leaning against the perfect walls and shrinking away behind 200 people who could all out-vocab me, out-think me, out-write me, and outright take my spot, get my admissions envelope, the fat one that starts with “We are pleased to inform you …” and not the skinny one ….

I had to. Standing there, I had to effect change, remind myself that I could still influence people, even in this room of paneling and bookcases where I was, at best, “nothing special.”

So I did it. I take full responsibility. I yawned.

And the guy with the mustache was right. Two girls who could kill me on a field hockey field, one guy who could write a better term paper than me, two parents who would put the proud bumper sticker on their cars, and one admissions officer yawned.

Sometimes you just have to remind yourself that you exist.