In high school, I was a big fish in a small pond.

Let me rephrase that: in my tiny graduating class of 100 kids, in many ways, I stood out as an academically driven and generally well-rounded person, and was accustomed to being recognized as such. This idiom, “a big fish in a small pond,” has been on my mind a lot recently, because it has been made blatantly obvious to me over my first two years in college that I am no longer a "big fish" like I once was in high school: I am a very average college student, and I think that is one of the best things that could have ever happened to me.

While I was well aware of the fact that my small high school was not an accurate representation of the real world or the people in it, I did not come into college expecting to struggle, and freshman year, I honestly didn’t. It wasn’t until sophomore year where I started getting my ass handed to me: I suddenly felt like a tiny fish in a ginormous pond. I thought to myself, “I’ve taken hard classes before, this shouldn’t be such a big deal,” and then found myself hanging on by a thread to a less than mediocre average, praying for extra credit and miracles while stress-eating equally mediocre grilled cheese sandwiches.

Being at a school surrounded by peers who care as much as I do (if not more) about doing well academically is extremely motivating and is one of the things that initially drew me to Rochester. It is also something that can be extremely intimidating—everyone is going to push themselves beyond their limits to succeed and it is expected that you do the same. "People who care about excelling" is no longer a minority category of people at college—that is everyone around you. You competed to get into the school, and you will compete to do well within it.

Because there is so much competition placed on academics and everything else you are involved in, you realize that you are not going to be the best at or even good enough for a lot of things. You learn to pursue the things that matter most to you and that you are most passionate about, and you realize that other activities that may have been defining features of your past are best remembered fondly and kept in the past. You learn to take both your failures and your successes with a grain of salt. You learn more about your strengths and how to highlight them, and you learn the importance of persistence and motivation in achieving your goals.

Being a big fish in a small pond is great for some people: personally, I got a lot of opportunities that I would not have had otherwise. You do feel special, and that’s not the worst thing in the world, however, it can make "learning to fail" that much more difficult when you begin to face failure. Though college life is not an accurate representation of the world, it is the next closest thing and surely a large step up from high school. Having the experience of being the small fish in the big pond of college has above all else taught me the importance of pushing myself to do my absolute best, a lesson I continue to learn every day with every failure and every success I face.