Two years ago, I published my very first opinion piece, “Don’t expect to enjoy college,” in the News’ 2022 First Year Spissue. The piece was a warning not to let expectations define your first year of college, but rather to take things as they come. At the time, I was a rising sophomore, riding the high of my first year at Yale and feeling that I had college all figured out. If I had no idea what I wanted to do post-grad, I still had three more years to decide.
I don’t think it really hit me that there would be life after Yale until I was nearing the end of my junior year last spring. My older friends were graduating, my peers interning at firms that would likely hire them and I suddenly realized that in about a year, college was going to spit me out into the real world, where knowledge of Platonic philosophy — along with everything else I had learned in Directed Studies — would not matter as much as the ability to create crisp Powerpoints. What I had figured out at the end of my freshman year was largely that I adored college. Now, college is almost over. If I am scared of what’s to come, I am absolutely terrified of what I am leaving behind.
Most of us are familiar with the age-old refrain that college is “the best years of our lives.” For this short window of time, we enjoy the freedoms of adulthood without its concurrent responsibilities. We are meant to form lifelong friendships, gain lifelong wisdom and maybe even start a lucrative career. In other words, from the moment I first set foot on Yale’s campus, the pressure was on.
With three years of college under my belt, I am doubtful of the truth of this proposition, not least because I would like to believe there are still better things ahead. While life at Yale has been incredible — I wouldn’t trade my experience for the world — it has also often been difficult in ways only college can be. I have wrestled with homesickness, competition and overwhelming amounts of work. I have had my share of nights that went on far too long, far too late — both out on frat row and tucked away between the Sterling stacks. I have desperately wished for the quiet of my own space. I have felt painfully alone.
All of this is to say, college has had as many lows as highs. In truth, the lows were some of the most memorable parts of all, from boring lectures to brutal break-ups to re-spraining the ankle that never fully healed from a tumble I took my freshman fall. In falling, we learn how to get back up, even if we rise a little bruised and broken. In the end, college is not just an education in economics, engineering or English literature; it is an education in life.
My advice to incoming first years: make the most of the years ahead, but don’t feel pressure to live life to its very fullest every second of every day. How could you know the best way to live? You are here to begin working that out. And remember that the time you spend outside of the classroom is at least as valuable as your time inside it.
As I enter my senior year, I still have a thousand things left to figure out. I’m no math major, but I am certain that my chances of finding all the answers in just two short semesters are close to zero. I am only a little older, a little wiser, than I was two or three years ago. I am making as many mistakes as new friends. At the ripe age of 21, I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.
Perhaps one of Yale’s first lessons to me, from my first-year fall in Directed Studies, will also end up being one of the last. Perhaps it is okay, as Socrates suggested, to know that I know nothing, and to approach the next stage of my life open to questions as much as answers.
ARIANE DE GENNARO is a senior in Branford College. Her column “For Country, For Yale” provides “pragmatic and sometimes provocative perspectives on relevant issues in Yale and American life.” Contact her at ariane.degennaro@yale.edu.