Three years ago, I was preparing for my second semester at Ithaca College. I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I had been during my first, since I knew what to expect. For example, I knew that the winds in Ithaca made winter especially brutal. I knew that textbooks were going to be expensive. And I knew that the dining hall food was going to be awful. What I didn’t know was how much I’d grow to love Ithaca College.
If I’m going to get nostalgic, I should probably start at the beginning. Ithaca College was the first of four colleges I visited, and was also my favorite of those four. Unfortunately, my low GPA also made Ithaca College my “reach school.” I ended up being accepted (obviously), but was in a state of near-constant panic during the summer before my first semester.
Despite visiting IC’s campus and briefly walking around the Ithaca Commons, they were nevertheless uncharted territory for me. I had grown up in a conservative Catholic household, and now I was off to a college in a town that my family and friends referred to as “Hippyville.”
But I had lost my faith in God a couple of years before I even visited Ithaca, and I abandoned my conservative beliefs shortly after that loss. If I’m being honest, this probably made it easier for me to adjust to Ithaca’s social and political environment.
As I verbosely reminisce about my time at IC (even though it’s not over yet), I keep thinking about the popular description of college as a place of “self-discovery.” So what have I discovered about myself? Off the top of my head, I’ve discovered that I love studying philosophy, that I prefer editing to writing, and that I’m still not absolutely sure what I want to do with my life. Does this mean that I’ve somehow done college “wrong” since I haven’t exactly discovered my entire self? Personally, I’d say no.
I don’t think there’s a specific time or a place for self-discovery. Instead, I think life itself is merely a continuous process of self-discovery. What a clichéd and unoriginal revelation, huh? I know, I know. But to double down on clichéd and unoriginal revelations, I’ve also learned that the more you know, the more you don’t know.
Does this mean you shouldn’t bother learning anything, because there will always be something you haven’t learned? Of course not, I believe learning about the world around us helps learn about ourselves. And I think this is why college is considered a place of “self-discovery,” because it is ultimately a place of learning. So as I begin my final semester of college, I take comfort in knowing that even after I graduate, I will continue to learn.
