All around me, there were people who embodied the ideal student archetype — multi-talented but also distinguished in a specific area of interest. As someone who does not have such a clear-cut path, I felt lost. Everyone else around seemed to be confidently crossing the seas towards some clear goal while I blankly marveled at the vastness of the waves and waited for a vehicle of my own to appear and sweep me off my feet. However, after completing my freshman year, I’ve realized that waiting for a ship on the horizon is not nearly a good enough plan, and that I have to actively pursue my interests in order to find assurance in my path.
Going into high school, I knew I wanted to improve myself, especially by finding a passion that I could, in some way, stand on for the rest of my life. This notion was a large part of why I came to Andover; I was optimistically drawn to the shiny blue brochures advertising an expansive, nuanced, yet navigable course of study and countless, passionately run student organizations. I believed the school would present countless bright and varied paths that would invite me forward onto great journeys of self-discovery and improvement. I envisioned that a destined opportunity would catch my eye and give me perennial confidence and dedication. However, life is rarely so simple, and the opportunities I found were not so clearly defined or easy to seize.
For the first months, I waited, afraid to commit to any given niche without the assurance that it would forever appeal to me. Obscure visions of various potential futures filled me with a fear that by investing in one area, I would be forced to estrange myself from others. My aunts and uncles all worked happily as doctors or lawyers, and while I could see a career in either field, neither fully seized my focus. Further, by investing in something like STEM, I would have less time to learn about history or literature. So, unwilling to swim, I dreamed of a moment of catharsis where everything would fall into place, resolving all my doubts and leaving only the question, “Why didn’t I find this sooner?”
But those moments of catharsis never appeared. I looked into a vast spread of clubs ranging from Linguistics to PAPERS to Quizbowl to The Phillipian, most of which were enjoyable, but never monopolized my interest. I would attend the first few meetings, listen to their presentations, and meet many new groups of motivated peers. But I would find myself at night asking, “Could I really be happy pouring my everything into this?” A week spent preparing for a debate tournament would build my confidence and investment, just to give a dishearteningly mediocre performance that left me wondering what I was doing and whether I should pivot extracurriculars; the initial cold of the surf dissuaded me from wading deeper.
During this period, I also pondered deeper doubts: why am I even trying to get off this beach? Am I missing something more profound by focusing my efforts on making myself seem passionate and accomplished? Is there more to being a student? To being in high school?
But I have now become cognizant of the fact that while I framed myself as waiting and questioning, I was also paralyzed. I had convinced myself that investing in something I would regret and having to reinvent myself was so terrible that it would be better to wait for assurance. What I failed to acknowledge is that it is an equally terrible, if not worse, fate to never invent myself in the first place.
No greater signs have shown themselves to me, but time has passed, the tides have risen, and I have reached two conclusions. Firstly, at this rate, I will drown if, when high school is over, I remain sitting, unmoved, on that same spot on the sand. Secondly, I will never know if I enjoy swimming across the sea if I never make it past the initial chill of its waters. In other words, some direction is better than no direction, and to know if you could devote yourself to something, you must make it past the surface level. Even something as daily as writing, I try to do so with the desire to push myself. To be cognizant of the piece I am sculpting, the nuance of the semantics I use, and who my words make me, no matter where they are written.
I have come to realize that there are a myriad of actions better than waiting. Even if I lack confidence or skill or assurance, to throw myself fully into the things I do. Those signs I longed for — signs that confirm that I am going the right way, that this could be my passion — are probably lying plainly beneath the sea’s surface, and I only need to swim a bit farther to find them.
