At the beginning of September, I came back to campus ready to start my Sophomore year. Some people believe that the word “Sophomore” is a portmanteau of “sophos” and “moros”, wise and foolish respectively. Ain’t that the truth. I would like to think that I wasn’t overly confident and/or arrogant a month ago but I will admit that I felt like college was no longer a place of unknown, unpleasant surprises. This was far from the truth (the first unpleasant surprise).
I’ve always had the mindset of “break your limits and let new ones take their place.” Last year, I thought I was breaking my limits; now in retrospect, I realize that I was merely scraping them. I chose to challenge myself more and now I feel like I’m breaking apart little by little. Taking a class with seniors and graduate students make me feel like a child learning his abc’s but there’s something about it that I can’t let go of. I acknowledge that I’m ages behind my peers in my algorithms class; but I recognize that I will traverse those ages through the mere semester span of algorithms. This excites me; logically, it’s an incredibly efficient trade-off. It reminds me that it’s irrelevant where one starts compared to peers if both end up in the same place. It reassures me of my own significance when I become lost in my own circumstances.
Potential wasted is a mournful condition of the human race, but potential nurtured is the rare, beautiful redeemer of such a condition.
This past week, I’ve simply despaired over how lost I am in my algorithms class. I understand all the material but I lack the maturity to prove the correctness of it all. And then I remembered, I’m taking such a class precisely because of my lack of maturity, such that I may realize my potential in the harshly nurturing environment of algorithms.
Earlier today, a professor posed the question “why did you go to university?” This question made me realize that I had forgotten my own reason for being here at Brown.
Don’t forget why you are doing what you do, and if you don’t know then take some time and figure it out. It’s worth it.
I remembered that I’m not here for good grades; I’m not here to be smart; I’m not here to feel comfortable.
I’m here to grow and experience an intellectual puberty of sorts…wait that sounds uncomfortable…but wait it’s supposed to be. Puberty is awkward, it’s weird, it’s confusing, it’s uncomfortable, it’s isolating; but the result is an invaluable and unprecedented growth into maturity. Weird analogy right? It was the only one I could think of to describe how I feel right now: like that 13 year old mid-pubescent boy trying to play varsity soccer with high school seniors.
I look forward to when this uncomfortable growth is over, but I relish in looking back each passing day and knowing that I’m simply better than I was the day before.