With my first year of college finally completed, I sometimes sit back and reflect on high school. Those years can be summed up with one word: disappointment. Perhaps that is a bit harsh on myself, but I constantly wish I could just redo those years and make my time more memorable. I lose sleep over the mistakes I made, the clubs I should have joined, the different classes I should have taken. I really wanted to learn how to make fun videos, or be more educated on the complexities of worldly affairs and governmental crises. If I had done pursued these things, would I be where I am now? If I hadn’t been so socially withdrawn at the beginning of high school, would I have less anxiety and more friends? The overlying theme is that I really didn’t push myself to explore new interests or challenge myself as a person. I think with all the pressure of “what career will you have?” looming over me and the lack of proper guidance by a school counselor or other professional help, I latched onto what I was most interested in: medicine. I didn’t take any side pathways that I was also interested in because I feared that I would be wasting my time. These lost opportunities haunt me. Maybe you think I am overblowing this and believe that this is just a natural process of maturing and finding your place in the world, and you’re completely right. However, this is the type of person I am; I constantly dwell over these mistakes.
And I understand that I can’t change the past. I have a weird mindset and everything I do has baby steps. But I’ve been taking them for the past few years now, and freshman year I started to run. However, that was more during second semester; I had a lot of setbacks in the Autumn semester. This is quite surprising in retrospect, because I went into college more confident than before. I had all my anxiety and depression in control, I had made so many friends in senior year of high school and was looking forward to meeting more people. Additionally, I knew what track I was going for, the premed track, and I was surely going to go for it. But, not everything worked out. I think I focused so much on studying and making sure I was getting ready for medical school that I never really lived my first semester. I was constantly worrying about grades that I never went outside to do new things. My interests faded, my overall friendliness dissipated, and I lost the college experience. This all crescendoed into a disastrous first series of midterms during the Spring semester, where I had a series of panic attacks that created a wave of low test scores. It was at this point I realized I was ruining my overall attitude and, potentially, my future. I was really close with my roommates, but they were off meeting new people and trying new things that, while they may not have worked, they were at least moving forward. Meanwhile, I had regressed to where I was sophomore year of high school. I had test anxiety, my depression was surfacing daily, and I felt alone. And when I am in this state, I find myself reflecting on the past. I was wishing daily that I could go back to the beginning of high school and start it all over again.
At this point I decided to stop and start over. I knew in the back of my head that, yes, I may have made mistakes in the past. But that is all hindsight 20/20, and I need to make sure that I don’t feel this way about college afterwards. I started with baby steps. Take life one day at a time. Pay attention the whole time throughout lecture so I don’t have to study extensively outside of it. Talk to new people everyday. Then I started walking. I had previously thought about leaving Ohio Health Aid, a club I had joined at the beginning of the school year. But, once I really tried to get invested in the club, I got into the mission and the community. Why not stay and try and push to be more involved in it? So I did, and while I didn’t get any of the leadership positions I tried out for (rightfully so, because I botched the interview big time), I still became a larger part of the organization. I started applying for new internships, new volunteering positions. I created a blog, a blog that didn’t last long, but something that I at least tried. And then I began to run. I used to program, and I was starting to get into it more. Why not, instead of cellular Neuroscience, take computation Neuroscience and learn Python over the summer? I have begun to play tennis again. I am trying to write my own movie so that hopefully I can use my STEP funds for that next year. If I find something I want to look into, I do that so I know I won’t have to worry about it in the future.
It has been a slow process, but it’s paid off. I have become involved in so many new clubs that I can’t wait to be get started in. I am trying out new things, learning some incredible stuff outside my major so that I can expand my skill set. And my GPA ended up somehow really turning out well. I really tried to go after everything I was interested in, and I am proud to say that I don’t regret at all what I’ve done this semester. Alright, maybe some mistakes here and there, but isn’t learning from these mistakes what really shapes us?