Hello readers!
Hope you’re well :). I’m currently on a bit of an adrenaline rush, since my flight to San Diego leaves tomorrow at 5am! I’m going to the annual Society for Neuroscience conference, from Saturday to Wednesday, and I’m very excited :). I’m also a bit nervous (AHHHH I’m missing classes and messing up my sleep schedule!) but no worries—my sense of adventure will triumph :).
Despite that imminent event, what I want to talk about this week is something more reflective. Last week a potential Wellesley student commented on the blog, and this was her question: “If you were given another chance, would you choose Wellesley again?”
While she was likely expecting an unhesitant “Yes!”, this question hints at a deeper concept that I’ve been pondering during my time Wellesley. What would my life have been like if I’d gone to the other major school I was accepted to? What would it have been like without two years of swimming? What job would I have? Who would my friends be? And if we go back even further: what if I had been accepted to different schools? What if my high school experience was different? Middle school? You can go back as far as you like, and still the question remains: what then?
There are some things I know would be the same. I’d still love writing, and that would be in my life somehow, though probably not in this form. I’d likely be involved in neuroscience, because my particular upbringing drove me towards hard science, and I have an intrinsic fascination with psychology. My personality would have common threads; though I’ve been shaped greatly by my experience, I think hints of my approach to life to be seen in first grade :). I’d probably be involved in exercise, depending on how far back we went.
There are things that I know would be different. Friends? Friends dominate your experience in college, and your peers are incredibly important in high school as well. Who would I have been without my unique collection of people? Details? Oh, there are so many details that are impossible to predict. I would be in a different research lab, with different mentors, with different teachers, with different classes. I’d have different organizations, different resources, and different opportunities.
Tiffany was telling me earlier this week that she felt guilty, because she has so much going on that she’s not practicing piano enough. She rattled off her priorities on her fingers: school, swimming, music, (and family, MCAT studying, and her organizations). “I know I only have school and the swim team for four years, and I have music for life,” she told us, worried. “But then I realized I only have my music teacher Ms. Shapiro for four years as well. And she’s so wonderful, and I’m not getting the most I can out of her!”
But that statement—“I’m not getting the most out of it!”— is always true. I could never maximize my potential in any single thing. I’d rather distribute my efforts across different aspects of my life, and enjoy doing the best I can—not giving all I have in anything, but doing good enough in everything—with the sum. Why feel guilty over the fact that I can’t do it all? That my choices are made and over? Why instead don’t I focus on the choices, an endless field of possibilities, that I can make now?
I don’t want another chance to go back and choose a different college. I want to be right where I am, with the wonderful friends I have, with my teachers as my mentors, with the swim team, my admissions job, my Wellesley successes and failures. I had no idea about any of this when I decided to come to Wellesley. I knew it had the things I cared about: academics, small classes, and possibility—but I didn’t know anything about my future Wellesley experience, and I had no way of knowing.
What I’m trying to say is this: college is another choice, and you’re going to turn out fine regardless. If you visit and you think you could be happy there, that’s all you really need. You can hardly predict what you’ll love about a school when you’re living there, so make your choice and be happy with it. You don’t need to worry about what could have been. You’ll make the most of what you’ve done.
Monica