If I had to describe college with one phrase, it’d have to be “the constant throwing of wonderful opportunities in your face, so fast and furious that you lose all ability to process them and end up feeling like a deer in the headlights.”
Okay, so that was way longer than a phrase, but college is too complex a topic to be described in one phrase.
When I started college, everyone told me to figure out what I wanted to do, then work hard and go do it. It seemed simple enough, except there were so many amazing pathways to choose from. What should I do—med school, business, research, teaching? Everyone around me seemed to have their entire lives figured out, and here I was walking class to class pretending to have it all figured out too because if I didn’t have it all figured out, I was a fraud who didn’t deserve to be in college.
As it turns out, none of this is true. Most college students don’t really know what they want to do with the rest of their week, let alone the rest of their lives. Not knowing what you want to do definitely does not make you a fraud, just a typical young adult! It took me until senior year to figure this out.
College is a time of not knowing, and that’s perfectly okay. Not knowing what you want to do means you get to try new things, and that’s what makes college great.
Be open to every opportunity that piques your interest. Some of my favorite experiences of college were made on a whim decision to try something outside of my comfort zone. That being said, don’t keep going down a path you know is wrong for you—whether that’s a major, a university club, or your part-time job. It’s totally fine to try something, realize it’s not for you, and move on to the next thing. That’s one pathway crossed off your list.
Sometimes you figure out something is not for you the hard way—like failing a class or getting fired from an internship. I’ve nearly had both happen, and it felt like the entire world was crashing down around me. Then in the wake of the explosion, I realized it was a blessing in disguise. If it bored me too much to put in the effort for one semester, it probably wasn’t an important part of viable lifelong career path.
Some of my most accomplished professors have told me that the path to their success was far from linear, zig-zagging from one opportunity to the next until they ended up in their dream job studying and teaching about things that fascinate them. The important thing is that they learned something from everything they did and took it with them to the next opportunity.
So these four years of pulling your hair out and crying at odd hours of the night wondering if the never-ending pile of homework and responsibilities will ever pay off—maybe they’re not so bad. Maybe they’re exactly what you need to discover the life of your dreams.
At the end of your four years, you’ll come tumbling out of the dark tunnel you thought might never end. You may be roughed up a little around the edges, but you’ll be alive and shaped into a person you never would have been had the road been straight and easy.
To those who do have it figured out, that’s great—you’re well on your way. To the rest of us: take a deep breath, we’ll get there.
