I’m a perfectionist, as I feel many college kids are. But by being a perfectionist, I don’t mean in the way where I want all my papers to sound perfect or my closet to be organized by color, I mean in the way that I must plan out and know every single small detail about my life. When I was a freshman at Cal I wrote in a notebook at night for what I would eat the next day, and if I strayed away from that I would have a sort of panic attack, thinking that I was not in equilibrium, I would not eat and punish myself and start over. I would severely plan out my schedules and classes, making over 50 plans that listed the same thirty-five classes that I would take over the period of four years. I had to know all my activities as well, like what club I was going to join and where I would be within the club in four years time. If I didn’t like what I saw, I immediately moved on. This fear of the unknown and obsessing over a life I had to have happen drained me by the end of my first semester. I remember drilling into my mind that if I was not a doctor I was nothing, and my failing marks on my chemistry exam for some reason still didn’t stray me away from medical school. The price of having concrete vision created a spiraling hole in which I thought I couldn’t get out of. I remember at the end of my first semester I started filling out another “common app”, the college application for most private schools, thinking I could lie and pretend my first year never happened and I could just start all over. It wasn’t until then that I finally listened to what my therapist told me, “Why do you have to know everything?”.

I had never really thought about his question because I thought it was absurd that he could even ask. Isn’t there a sort of stoic beauty that comes from knowing exactly what you want and going for just that? It wasn’t until I changed my major my second year of college that I realized that there is a sort of keen beauty in not knowing. Once I started telling people “I don’t know yet” when asked about future plans, the rigidness and anxiety that I was feeling almost melted away. People stopped asking me constantly what my grades and test scores were, and I began finally feeling like a regular college student. Being in college, and especially a rigorous one such as Cal, almost forced you to feel as if you need to have your life planned out or else you’ll fail. But honestly, I’m not sure if in 4 years I’ll be in law school or medical school or maybe even trying to become a master chef. All I do know for sure though, is that I really don’t know, but in the end I’m going to be okay.