Jagur Parks
There’s so much pressure to have the “perfect” Yale experience — to do every class reading, join every club, have the best nights out and secure the perfect internship, all in hopes of being deemed a “success.” It feels like everyone is so afraid of regretting their decisions that we get locked in a stasis of indecision.
During my first-year first semester at Yale, I was so unsure and afraid of missing out. “What if” questions kept me from saying no. “What if this club is where I’ll find my life’s meaning or slow-burn romance?” “What if I don’t go out tonight and miss meeting the person who will change everything?” In hindsight, these wonderings feel naive, but in the moment, they felt real. Because when you’re new, everything feels like it could be THE thing that shapes your life.
So I said yes to everything: to clubs I didn’t care about, to classes I wasn’t interested in (sorry, gen chem), to nights out when I would have rather stayed in. I filled my days with meetings and applications and coffee chats, convinced that the more I did, the more I could avoid regret. If I left no door unopened, no opportunity unexplored, I wouldn’t have to wonder “what if?”
But what no one tells you is that saying yes to everything is its own kind of regret. That stretching yourself too thin means you aren’t really anywhere at all. That, in trying to hold onto every possible version of myself, I was afraid of choosing one, of committing to a path that might mean losing something better. I worried about all the lives I wasn’t living — until I realized I wasn’t fully living the one in front of me. That is real regret.
What broke the cycle was going home. I returned to South Dakota and attended a Christmas Party with all my old friends. I took a drive going nowhere, just watching the hills and canyon roll by. I went back to my high school and walked through the same halls that I had when I was only concerned with AP exams and the ACT. Stepping away from campus, seeing my hometown, I remembered the many different lives I could have lived — in choosing to come to Yale, I am in some ways living the one with the most branches.
I want to choose my life carefully, not just collect noise and clutter. Not just pack my schedule with obligations. Not just chase experiences because they seem like the right thing to do. I want to fill my days with people who mean something to me. I want to sit in a common room long past midnight, talking about nothing and everything. I want to take the class that makes me excited to do the reading. I want to stay in sometimes and not worry about what I might be missing.
I’m learning that “busy” isn’t a badge of honor. That the most important part of Yale isn’t how much you do. That some of the best moments come not from perfect planning, but from sitting still long enough to let them find you.
So this semester, I started making choices that weren’t about avoiding regret but about embracing it. I quit clubs that didn’t excite me. I let go of the idea that every night had to be the best night ever. I dropped classes I thought I “should” take for the ones I actually wanted to. And I started trusting that whatever path I took, I would find meaning in it.
Because the truth is, there is no “perfect” Yale experience. There’s only the one you have. You will never join every club, take every class, or meet every person. No matter what, you will leave this place with unanswered what ifs.
So maybe regret isn’t something to fear — it’s something to acknowledge. It’s proof that we had options, that our time here was full of enough opportunity to wonder about the paths we didn’t take. And if we let it, regret can remind us not of what we missed but of what we chose.
And I think that’s enough.