I miss USC and LA… but I feel pretty lost when thinking about going back. It’s not that I think I don’t belong at USC, it’s that I think USC is too good for me. From my first week of classes, walking around campus into the big lecture halls surrounded by high-achieving students and intelligent professors was when I first thought “How did I even get into this school?”
I know that I’m intelligent-enough, hardworking and passionate in things involving academics...but did I really earn going to this school? Or was I just lucky? I am going to somehow get a letter from the school saying “Hey, sorry but you don’t actually belong here? We need you to leave.”
I love USC. I love being a Trojan. I love living in LA and being surrounded by so many like-minded people that I would not have met anywhere else. But thinking about going back to USC and the sunny California weather? It leaves me a bit anxious if I’m being honest. It leaves me feeling lost and unsure of where I’m going for the next three years of my college career.
But don’t even get me started on what I feel about what I want to do as a career and in my life because I’m even more loss on that.
For those who struggle with being a perfectionist and a generally anxious person (like me) can get what I’m saying. Honestly, any college student struggling to figure out what they want to do as a major, as a job can understand this.
It’s frustrating how this is engraved in us though. Why is it that we’re expected to have a sustaining job at 25? To somehow have your life together before your 30s? To somehow be perfect in everything? Why can’t we just have a day (or even a week?) laying in bed, watching some Netflix and literally doing nothing?
Maybe this is an oversimplification of this problem, but like, can’t we all just chill?
If you tell me to imagine myself in 10 years of how my life is going to be like, I’ll tell you that it will be exactly the same as it is right now: anxiously driven by expectations that are bestowed upon me. Or maybe this is just me, thinking that everyone expects so much more out of me.
Even writing this I’m second guessing myself. Should I even publish this; turn this in for editing? Will people think that I’m being overdramatic, “get over yourself”, etc.? This constant questioning into every little thing I do-- from questioning whether I really belong at my university to thinking I’m not good enough-- it’s something that I hate and wish it would stop.
Don’t think that anxiety and perfectionism isn’t a thing? Well, for a few seconds you got a glimpse of it. A glimpse to something that is almost a bit too personal to share.
