The one word that would come to characterize most people’s freshman year - I said “most people” because there are always the Type-A kids who knew they wanted to be Mr. Lenka’s song could well be the theme song of most Stanford students: “All I wanna be/ all I wanna be, oh/ All I wanna be is everything.” Something was changing, and you felt like you could become anybody you wanted to be.
And there was the unmistakable sense of optimism in the air, the eucalyptic scent of possibilities. Waltzing through activities fair convinced me I’d need three lifetimes, maybe more, to fully experience Stanford. I remember how it was when I first got to Stanford two years ago, feeling overwhelmed by the dizzying spread of everything on offer. It’s an uplifting message to start a starry-eyed, confused freshman on her exploration. When I ask Stanford students why they do the things they do, their answers invariably fall under one of these categories: 1) they don’t have a choice (tuition is insane these days) 2) they simply love doing it and that’s reason enough 3) they are “keeping their options open.” Increasingly I am hearing more of the third, perhaps because Stanford students live in a beckoning world with so many opportunities, they naturally want to make the most of them.Īfter all, since day one of freshman year we have been told - over and over to the point of becoming trite - to explore, to try new things, to be unafraid of reimagining yourself.
0 kommentar(er)
