I have spent far too much of my time in the last 24 hours looking for school mailing addresses to label Teacher Recommendation letters. I am in fact only giving one teacher a complete set of stuffed envelopes, since of of my two teacher rec-writers is in the Nicaraguan jungle right now and has hers on file with the College Counseling office.

The common app website “info page” is full of terrible lies. I checked for some of my schools and while some matched up with the addresses there, others were quite different. As such this page is not to be trusted in my mind so I had to go and find independent confirmation for every address. This is something that I should have done earlier but it is also something that schools should make simpler. I find myself despairing under a tsunami of paper and it’s not even as if I’m printing out any applications (yet)!

You don’t believe me, do you? Or, if you’ve spent time volunteering for political parties, you are probably scoffing at this sort of envelope stuffing. Fine. I know it isn’t that bad but it’s tedious and frustrating–especially since this is one instance where people should be really trying to help you find their address. Colleges shouldn’t make it a puzzle or riddle just to find out where to mail things. I can only imagine the misery anyone disabled might have trying to get this information. I know not everyone has 15 schools on their list, but this is still ridiculous. Even half the time I have spent is far too much. Do I blame the common app? I don’t know. It helped, certainly, for the 10 schools that used that form. A little. If I were at home the labels would be printed out and we’d just do the postage on the machine, so it would be faster. Too bad.
Look, an envelope-fan.