I'm writing this on my first day of my senior year. When I was a sophomore, I wrote an editorial called "Freshmen Should Value Alone Time," wherein I detailed the value of new students, particularly underclassmen, taking the time to be with themselves and grow with themselves.
I wanted to do a sequel of sorts, a cutesy callback to my two year old piece. What I've determined is that, though being alone is something to treasure, there's an even more valuable resource for the young college student: openness.
Think of some of the things that young adults are told prior to entering college and at orientation. There's high-minded advice ("Be true to yourself!") and pragmatic strategies ("Don't buy textbooks until at least the second day."), but one of the most reliably repeated is the commandment to "try new things."
The American college campus is peculiar among settings because of the concentration of diverse people representing diverse backgrounds and interests. Besides that, most students are around the same age, giving, as a professor of mine put it, college something of a sci-fi flavor.
So, you, the 'Average Emory Freshman,' are plopped into an environment of people who are both very different from you while also having approximately the same amount of leisure time and the same desire to articulate themselves. Try new things, right? You try a new club, or four, make the requisite first-year friends and try a couple of new cuisines. Things go really well for you, or maybe, they proceed with a bit more difficulty.
You're starting to encounter resistance within yourself. I remember feeling anxiety because I didn't know if I had in some way 'betrayed' what I perceived as a more authentic past self. I got cold feet about the person I was becoming.
My relationship to my own past and future became ambiguous. Do you know that feeling? So, you try new things. But what does it mean to do that in a meaningful way? Do we slide down a buffet of interests and identities, picking and choosing on a lark? Sort of! But what's significant isn't the choosing. Oh? All of the old standbys of "try new clubs, meet new people, get outside your comfort zone" are not simply to encourage us to taste test from a host of new options. These words of advice are calls to be transformed.
It's hard to sell something like transformation. It's a frightening prospect at almost any given time. Opening up to the possibility of changing, and doing so conscientiously, is a statement of your own relatedness to your circumstances. That is, when I open up the space for change, I acknowledge that where I am, and who I am, has been contingent, and continues to be. For those who put a lot of stock in authenticity, it can feel tantamount to a betrayal of your own self.
Your history is important: it's the accumulation of everything you've experienced before. But, don't be caught up and don't mistake that for the final word on who you are. Who you were in the past was as contingent then as it is now. Mindfulness of your own ability to change grants a degree of control, if not total authority, over your path that is empowering.
The idea of being true to yourself becomes an invitation to play and to discover what will constitute that true self for the time being. Trying new things, meanwhile, becomes a call, something mystic, to be porous and let the world flow through you. New people, new organizations, all of the hallmarks of college are secondary to the hard fact that you, that we, have the raw resource of time to be new and subtle in how we are.
We change throughout our lives, but college as a space has the flexibility of exploration built into its structure. Again, the wealth of opportunities to join (or found!) organizations, have new experiences and be exposed to different people each contribute to the collegiate focus on change. Even the dreaded General Education Requirement inspires us to take up those intellectual pursuits we ourselves might neglect.
The people you meet will probably have the greatest effect on you in college. Find a community of people, be it two or 20, who push you to greater heights. Your friends should accentuate what makes you feel good about the person you are. Become porous and let the good of others fill you up, and offer the same in return.
Change usually does not come on wings of comfort. There are times in college where you will feel uncomfortable - or worse. This invites us to reflect on our values, but change does not demand a total sacrifice of what we hold up as true.
The unfortunate thing about the college narrative is that it supposes that there is no mediation between our histories and our new experiences. I don't want to claim that it's 'somewhere in the middle,' because why get caught up in those sort of spatial metaphors? Take your time, be with yourself and notice how you're evolving from month-to-month and year-to-year.
So try new things. Let yourself be affected by the new things around you. Don't let go of the things you hold highest, but investigate them with the rigor fitting your unfamiliar experiences. Take an active part in your transformation! You will change over the next four years, but you can be an active participant in this by raising your self-awareness. Strictly speaking, every moment of your life led up to this one, where you are reading this particular editorial. The world invites you to greater understanding, but will you let understanding move you?
Resist what is contemptible, and let a spirit of play infuse all else.
-By Rhett Henry
