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The greatest challenge I have had in transitioning to college has been having to face the fact that while going through the college process I lost the sense of purpose and passion, and that I no longer have a goal on the horizon to steer towards. The following (probably unnecessarily) extensive anecdote serves as a background to help understand what I mean by the loss I have experienced since going to college. If you’d like to skip it, that’s fine. I just wanted to write it out to help clarify my point.

In the environment in which I grew up it went without saying that you were going to attend college. The only question was where you would go. In many peoples’ opinions, your schoolwork and extracurricular activities determined that. In freshman and sophomore year of high school, I inwardly rolled my eyes at my peers who I knew were only doing activities such as writing for the student newspaper and running for student government because they wanted to put them on their college application. When I reached my junior year and began to get a feeling of the competition I was up against for the schools I wanted to go to, however, I started panicking. Thoughts such as: why have I been so centered on what I want to do, and not thought about what will look good on a sheet of paper; What actually sets me apart from the people with whom I am competing; Why didn’t I get a better grade in that class; kept me awake at night. I suddenly felt like I had become just one more statistic. Junior and senior year were devoted to the college search and process. I set aside the bigger dreams and passions about what I wanted to do with my life (in fact, I was specifically told never to use the word ‘passion’ on a college application essay) and concentrated on academia. I stopped participating in activities I truly enjoyed if they took up the time I could be spending on things that might help me get into a college I wanted to go to. Admittedly, many of these feelings probably came as a result of the cooker-pressure nature of my private school, where excellence was the norm and anything less than exceptional was unacceptable, but I am sure that many people that went through and are currently going through the college process can relate, no matter where they came from.

Having been accepted into a college, I share the generic goals of other students in that I want to get my B.A. and then find job, but at the same time, I want to do things I love and pursue a career path in something that really interests me. Coming to Bryn Mawr, I realized that my academic anxiety has completely consumed me for the past few years. It is almost as though I’ve been hurtling towards the goal of sitting in a dorm room and studying for so long that I’ve forgotten life continues once you’ve achieved that. Instead of sitting in my room studying with a sense of pride and satisfaction, I feel a sense of confusion and loss. Hopefully within the next few semesters I’ll regain this sense of passion and purpose that I was advised to suppress in my last few years of high school.

I’d like to end with the following disclaimer:

I realize my story is only possible due to my privileged upbringing. I attended a private school, and did not have to worry about tuition when deciding what college to go to. In addition, I had the luxury of being able to do activities such as piano lessons and ice hockey if I so chose to. I also will not have to worry as much as others about finding a high paying job after leaving college, and have the privilege to explore careers to the point that I am able to settle in one that gives me a sense of fulfillment. I know few people are this lucky, and so it goes without saying that, in many ways, my sense of confusion is fairly trivial in comparison to the challenges other people face.