College is, presumably, a time to reinvent yourself. All at once, you are surrounded by endless opportunity—sports that you’d never heard of, research you’d never considered. For me, at least, I had an overwhelming sense of wanting to try everything; during the recent activities fair, I signed up for twenty-odd clubs and returned to my dorm to blast the relevant Shakira song ("Try Everything," obviously).
I knew, of course, that I would never actually be able to participate in twenty clubs; at some point, after attending a slew of interest meetings and trying my hand at activities ranging from dragonboating to archery, I’d have to settle on a few things on which I’d devote my time. I’d have to find something that truly captivated me, much in the way that I had devoted myself to a small handful of activities in high school.
The problem was, I was afraid of that moment, afraid of having to choose, afraid of eventually saying no.
And most of all, I was afraid that I was still attached to my high school self, and that, having made an effort to reinvent myself by trying new things, I’d regress to the pockets of comfort that I had created for myself in high school.
During the activities fair, I signed up to participate in a tutoring program. The feeling of discussing curricula and working with students gave me a comforting ease that discussing something like, say, business investments did not. I had been a peer tutor for several years in high school, and the thought of returning to tutoring seemed like a constant that contrasted with the unfamiliarity of business investments and hackathons (neither of which I had participated in before).
The idea frustrated me. In high school, I had a set of strengths—one might call them the building blocks—that I had used to define myself. Now, I wondered: was it possible to build something with blocks that I didn’t have? How much could I reinvent, and how much is unreinventable?
And even if I could reinvent everything, to what would I reinvent myself? In the familiar constraints of what I already knew, I understood which categories of knowledge I liked or disliked. In the world of utter unfamiliarity, every moment I invested ran a risk—I could spend my time exploring something that I turned out to hate.
Even the question of what to try in the first place required decision in itself. In essence, “trying new things” was not so much trying as it was making decisions with incomplete information.
By contrast, familiarity is the world of predictable conclusions. It is the thinking behind my four-year-plan, an Excel sheet on which I meticulous laid out my own life. I had created it knowing fully that, like most students, I would likely change my major more than once. I had created it knowing fully that, even within the Autumn quarter, I would change it again several times. But there was such a comfort to seeing something definitive, an exact path to an exact goal.
In seeking the new experiences, then, in seeking the chance to reinvent myself, my challenge was to learn to let go of some of the comfort—to let go of definitive knowledge and expose myself to uncertainty.
I would have to make myself comfortable with the idea that, as of right now, I don’t know my future major. And I don’t know which activities I’ll end up enjoying. I would have to make myself comfortable with the idea of investing in that uncertainty—that spending time on new experiences was not time wasted, but rather time well spent. Even if I hate what I try—even if I ultimately choose to return to my original plan—I will have learned something, and there is inherent value to that knowledge.
In my four-year plan, therefore, I deliberately left gaps. I designated spaces for electives that I may not learn about for years, made room for experiences I could not yet imagine. Perhaps that is what I should also do for my day-to-day schedule: invest time each day for the experiences I don’t know I’ll have.
And perhaps then I will find that I will have reinvented myself without realizing it, because daily experience matters far more than the plans within my mind.
