My ninth grade orientation was overwhelming, to say the least. The instant I graduated from the eighth grade, people would always advise me, “Join a bunch of clubs so you can put it on your resume. You have to make yourself look good on paper.” Every direction I looked, I was faced with smiling faces and people urging me to come listen to their spill on why their club was the best club. Chess Club, Key Club, Model UN, Interact, and NHS are only a few of them. The list could go on for pages. Me, being the anxious freshman that I was just politely listened to their speech, because I was afraid to say ‘no thank you’. I came into high school with the understanding that everything was a competition, and I knew that somehow, someway, I wanted to end up on top. And, to what I was told, the key to achieving that was extracurricular activities and organizations, aka resume boosters. So, I did as much as I possibly could without falling apart at the seams. I was the colonel of my high school dance team, I was the president of NHS, I maintained straight A’s, I was an active member of Key Club, I joined PALS to help mentor students, and I studied hours on end.
Now, four years later as a college freshman, I don’t think many of those things have changed. My second day at orientation, I walked through campus, and, again, everywhere I looked I was faced with those smiling faces and persuasive speeches. So, me being the anxious freshman (but this time in college) hoping to fit in, I grabbed almost every flyer. Running club? Got it! (And please keep in mind that I am not the best runner. I can run if there are cookies waiting for me at the finish line or running to the kitchen when I hear that dinner is ready, but that’s about it). Senate? Definitely. Undergraduate business council? Sign me up! But, although most things like organizations, persuasive people, and the belief that life is entirely a competition stayed the same, there was one significant change that occurred within me.
As I sat in my dorm room that second night of orientation, glancing through the pile of flyers I had accumulated over the day, I began to ask myself two questions: What purpose do these organizations serve me? What am I really reaching for here? It wasn’t that I didn’t think I was going to enjoy these things, but I knew that, in the back of mind, most of these organizations were paper-perfect and that was my main reason for hoping to join. They sounded good, and I could already here future potential employers OO and AH at my soon to be crafted college resume. But, I began to realize that this wasn’t high school. I was in college now. I needed to start doing things that added depth and richness to my life. And, I’m not saying that those things didn’t, but I needed to figure out what I was truly passionate for and not just what I was told to be passionate about.
Therefore, as I am now five weeks into college, I am not a part of any of those organizations I listed above. After letting go of the idea that I had to join every possible organization I could, I figured out what was truly important to me. The truth is, even now I don’t know the answer to those questions every time I ask. I’m not entirely sure what it is that I want to achieve in life or where exactly I want to go. I have a basic foundation, but I don’t have anything solid yet. However, I know now that I don't want to look back on my life in years to come and realize that I settled for my life instead of choosing it. I don’t want to realize that I'm not happy with where I have gone in life simply because I chased what made me seem paper-perfect. We, as human beings, are not two-dimensional. We are more than a front and back, perfectly crafted with no errors. We are three-dimensional, full of depth. We learn and make mistakes as we go. That’s what real life is.
Your life is more than the amount of times you won distinguished honor roll, the long lists of organizations that you were in, or the amount of chords you wore at your high school graduation. It’s about the passions that you have, the lives that you’ve changed, and the person that you have grown to become. And, well, as much as society teaches us that this growth comes from climbing the social ladder with perfect resumes and a list of achievements. It doesn’t. The growth comes from climbing the obstacles that you find within yourself, that hold you back, until you can finally say that the life you have is the life you want, not the one that you’re told is correct. So, as the great F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”
I hope you do. I truly do.
