As I’m wrapping up the final semester of my junior year and preparing to enter my last year of college, I’ve been reflecting on my college journey so far.
It didn’t start out how I wanted it to and I’m sure it ultimately won’t end how I want it to, but it’s been pretty wonderful. While I’m readying myself to enter into another realm of this thing called life, there are others who are beginning their journey into college and don’t know what to expect. I want you to know that that’s okay, and that you have plenty of time to figure everything out. Take my word for it.
When I started my college experience, I didn’t know what to expect. I had seen college portrayed on television, but that’s not really college. I was stressed out that I didn’t know what my major would be, that I didn’t know anyone at my university, and that I wasn’t leaving home to go to university in another state like everyone else was.
College is confusing, and everyone’s college journey often starts out a bit shaky, but know this: it will all work out for the best.
During my first year, I felt a full range of emotions. It was challenging going to difficult classes, meeting new people, and essentially finding my place at school for the next four (or five) years at school, but I eventually figured everything out. I made friends who I then lost, cried over exams, and had to calm the butterflies in my stomach that came all too frequently that first year, but I survived.
Something I’ve struggled with during my time at university is my perceived utter lack of preparation. I came in as an undecided major with a couple of different ideas of what I wanted to do once I graduated, but no idea of how to get there. I missed the first day of classes due to illness, and I was shy to a fault which made it hard to make friends.
Something I learned during my first year is that the best way to figure things out is to throw yourself into the thick of things. Introduce yourself to your professors, rather than the other way around; go to every club that you have even an inkling might interest you at least three times; become a leader on campus when you are almost positive you need leadership yourself.
It’s in these moments when you are involved and out of your comfort zone that you’ll figure out your strengths. You can do anything you put your mind to, and just because you don’t know exactly what it is that you want to put your mind to for the rest of your life yet doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out.
It took me a year and a half to figure out what I wanted to major in. I ultimately went with the advice that my art history professor gave me to study what I loved regardless of the paycheck I might end up getting in the end. It’s been great advice, because I genuinely love studying English literature (I’m a book nerd), but even after deciding what I wanted to study, it’s taken me a long time to figure out what I want to do with that.
Even now, with only one year left, I am feeling more anxious than excited. I know I need to quell that feeling. It’s a whole other post for a whole other time, but I think there’s always a certain level of uncertainty that comes with life in general, and that’s okay. I’ve learned that I don’t need to have everything figured out, and that it will all fall into place eventually.
Ultimately, college is a time for deciding who you want to be and taking the steps to become that person, but for now, confusion is okay. The answers will come eventually.
"Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.”
- George Saunders
