“Wait, you arrive mid-August, but classes don’t start until September 7th? What do you do from now until then?”

I get asked that question a lot: from parents, from friends back home, from the incoming freshmen. The latter group, at least, have begun to find out the answer as they start their journey into MIT, but for the former two groups, it’s still a bit perplexing.

“Oh, if only you knew.” I make a joke that as a sophomore who eagerly signed up to help with way more things than she should have, I’m busier during this period than I will be the first week or so when classes start. They don’t believe me, but it’s true.

The period of late August to early September at MIT is an exciting time. Between orientation, REX and recruitment/rush, there is always something to do. Fun things! Free food! Frosh galore! The feverish energy is contagious.

I remember going through that last year. It’s funny, being able now to look from the other side: not as an O-baby but as an Orientation leader, not as an advisee but as an associate advisor, not as a pre-frosh exploring new dorms but as a point person for a REX event, not as a girl going through recruitment and crashing in on rush but as a sorority girl looking for potential new members. Not as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed frosh, but as a… well, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed upperclassman.

Because believe it or not, I am not quite yet the jaded upperclassman that the juniors and seniors tell me I will be soon. MIT hasn’t yet killed my spirit. IHTFP still means to me I Have Truly Found Paradise.

That was not to say that freshmen year was a breeze, nor that I am not envious of the incoming freshman class. (Oh, you young, naive souls, with P/NR and so many bad decisions ahead of you.)

But still, I love MIT. And I want you all to love it, too. That’s why the upperclassmen work so hard to make this period a fun time for the frosh, to try to integrate them into campus life. Yes, MIT really is that amazing. I know some people doubt that, assuming that this halcyon period of orientation/REX/rush is the best that it can get. Not so. When classes start, it can be just as fun, if not more so. There may be less free food and fewer mandated events — you’re a lot more on your own — and that’s both a good and a bad thing. You are free to make your own choices, and then you have to live with them. Because college isn’t just sunshine and rainbows. You can sustain that fun, feverish energy from orientation, but only if you understand how to cope with the bad, too.

To help with that, I want to share the most important thing I learned at MIT.

Let's backtrack. Getting into MIT is a big ego booster, and most pre-frosh arrive at orientation cockier than a crowing rooster. Let me tell you straight up: sooner or later freshman year, that ego's going to take a bruising. You might receive a two-digit test score containing a 9 and a 5, and not in the order you were used to. You might realize that no matter how good you are at something, there is always someone better at it. You might speak up and recognize you are no longer the smartest person in the room — or that you never were. Hopefully, all this happens sooner rather than later. Because the sooner it happens, the sooner you realize that all of that? It doesn't matter.

If you know me at all, you probably know that I still maintain quite the ego. How do I do it, when I’m surrounded by so many people who are far more accomplished than I am? Well, I’m pretty happy with who I am. There are always things that I can do better, of course, and I’m acutely aware of my flaws, but generally, I like who I am. And it’s great that other people have done all these wonderful things — I mean it genuinely and not sarcastically when I say good for them — but that’s what works for them, not necessarily what works for me. And that doesn’t diminish the fact that I’ve done wonderful things, too.

One thing you learn pretty quickly here is how to celebrate other people’s successes without feeling inadequate about your own.

We are our own worst critics sometimes, and most of the time, things aren’t as big of a deal as we make them out to be. In a sense, you have to compartmentalize. You learn to accept that you’re average, and understand that everyone is. (Even if they’re the best at one thing, they’re probably awful at another, and it all averages out.) Know your strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, recognize that being average at a school like MIT is still kickass. The cream of the cream of the crop, if you will.

This may seem odd. How can you be the mean and the outlier at the same time? Luckily, life has never had to follow mathematical models. To borrow an example from physics, it’s almost a Schrodinger’s cat: you are safely within the box yet outside concurrently.

I learned a lot my freshman year, about so many things — square waves and transfer proteins, groin vaults and crystallography. I also learned a lot outside of lectures, about my limits, about my friends, about myself. But the most important thing I learned was to calibrate my definition of success to my own scale, not others'. It's not to say never compare yourself to others, but there's a difference between being inspired by these comparisons and being put down by them. One is productive, the other is unhealthy. At MIT, we are surrounded by so many inspiring people who have done great things and who will continue to do great things. It's easy to recognize this and feel inferior — "she cured cancer; what did I do?" — but it's so much better for you to recognize this and feel inspired — "She cured cancer; I can do cool things, too."

Internalizing how to genuinely be happy for other people's successes without feeling that your own are inadequate is key to fighting impostor syndrome. This is not to say that I never had my low points, nor that this solved all my problems. It did help, though, to remember this as I tried to fend off the potential onslaught of a massive inferiority complex. It's what kept me safely on one side of the IHTFP spectrum, the side I hope I'll steadfastly remain near for the next three years. Because to me, MIT is a wonderful place full of passionate, quirky, nerdy people — my people — and within it, I have truly found paradise.