I have a lot of qualms with the American education system. (I recommend reading a book entitled Academically Adrift for a more in-depth analysis on higher education in America.) Even at an elite university like University of Michigan, much of my “college experience” was not about learning or becoming a highly-educated person.
I have learned more in the past four years than I learned in my bachelor’s degree. I don’t fault the university system entirely—I could have and should have taken advantage of the resources available at my university. What I lacked was discipline and motivation, what I lacked was optimism and vision about the person I could become.
Reflecting on who I was at age 17, I remember that as I learned more, I became more and more disillusioned with my childish beliefs that things made sense, that there was a conclusion to every story, that there was a balance of good and evil in the world. I hated feeling lost and hopeless when confronted with the injustices and atrocities that had previously been hidden from me. Instead of getting positively motivated by this lack of knowledge and researching on my own to mitigate that lost and hopeless feeling, I retreated as much as I could to the childish worldview until it became intolerable. I was sick of feeling ignorant and living a self-indulgent life, but it was hard not to fall back into habits that were familiar yet self-destructive.
I decided to develop my ability to generate well-informed opinions about the issues we face in society, to expose what’s fact and what’s fiction, to devise solutions that could rectify what’s wrong with the world. As I learned more, what used to be mysterious and confusing became understandable with concentrated effort. I started to base my world view not on my feelings, not on religious dogma, not on any ideology or belief system. Over time I started to base my world view on historical reality. Each fragment of knowledge is like a puzzle piece to understanding why things are the way they are, and more often than not it leads me to re-evaluate things I thought I knew but had actually been misinformed about. The more I learn, the more I realize how much I still don’t know.
In life, we can’t know the full range of consequences of our actions until after the fact. Having started college at 17 years old, sometimes I wish I could transport myself back in time and warn myself of all the pitfalls to avoid. I would tell myself that, although it’s seen as normal, college should not be treated as a prolonged adolescence. Starting now, you are no longer a child—you are an adult—and this is your chance to take responsibility for your actions. Adulthood means understanding the gravity of your decisions, your behaviors, and your habits. I would tell her that who you decide to let into your life is your choice, and you should choose wisely.
Now here I am, ten years older. I feel ten years wiser, but when I’m 37 years old I will probably look back and reflect on how stupid I was at age 27. I can’t know who I will be when I’m 37, but I worry about it every day because the terrifying and exciting reality is that the choices I make each day are what mold me into the person I become. I wonder how things would be different if, when I was 17, some mentor could have told me that there isn’t a soul deep down inside that determines who you are—that’s a childish notion, and it's time to grow up and come to terms with the fact that who you are is a conglomeration of all the choices you have made and continue to make. How you handle hardships is within your power alone, and every day you determine for yourself what you will do with the life you have chosen to lead. I imagine at age 37 that will still be a bitter pill to swallow.
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