Written Week 6, Freshman Fall
Stanford is on its own time zone. Not just because the campus is huge or that there’s a particle accelerator nearby—time here simultaneously moves faster and slower than anything I’ve ever experienced before. A minute stretches into an hour, but a week passes like a day. It’s hard to believe that we’re actually halfway through the quarter.
Everyone says first quarter of fall is a period of growth, and my experience has been no different. I’ve learned so much, and not only through the insane pace of Math 51. Now that I understand better the way things go (and how busy everything is!!!), I hope to start a new phase with this blog/journal sort of thing. At the beginning, middle, and end of every quarter, I’d like to describe my top three impressions/things I learned and three goals I’d like to achieve. So let’s give this a shot!
The People
I expected that Stanford kids were amazing, but it’s impossible to truly understand what amazing means until you’re here and meeting people and interacting with people. Every single person I’ve met has a story to tell, every single person has a reason to be here, and every single person is excellent in their own singular way. Most importantly, every single person cares. This is by far the starkest contrast I’ve encountered to the way I grew up in Arizona. Stanford students are here because they cared about something, and hopefully, they’ll keep caring about it or find something else to care about. But that’s the critical thing—they are here (we are here?) to do and find things to do. It’s so refreshing and inspiring!!!
Despite everyone’s excellence, people are still down-to-earth, humble, and easy to talk to. It doesn’t matter if they grew up in a war-torn country, solved decades-unsolved math problems, founded a non-profit, starred in TV shows, or broke athletic records. Students are students and college is college, regardless of location. Heartbreak and frat parties are universal issues.
The Opportunities
“I didn’t understand what abundance meant until I came to Stanford.” Someone mentioned this to me today, and it’s a perfect description of what Stanford is. You can literally do anything here. The sheer number of opportunities (and emails) verges on paralyzing. New things pop up all the time that my high school self would have lunged to try, but now, I’m hyperaware of my limited time.
I’m not even upset by not getting into a class I wanted or getting rejected by a club anymore. Now, these rejections just represent exciting possibilities. For every thing you see, there are fifteen other things to try and do, all of which are equally wonderful and educational and eye-opening. It’s a lot to filter through, but it’s an amazing experience to have all of that possibility at my fingertips.
Self-Control and Work Load
It’s so easy to just stay up until 6 AM doing nothing with your friends. I want to be with people all the time, learning more about them and messing around and having a great time, but it can get really exhausting. It’s important to learn when to step back and take time for yourself (and sleep).
Also, COLLEGE IS SO HARD. I’ve never had to work harder academically than right now, and it’s simultaneously really fun and really challenging. My brain is getting poked and prodded and stretched on the daily. I’ve never spent so many hours doing homework before, but I can actually feel myself learning from the homework. It’s a new style of learning, one that I’m not entirely used to quite yet, but I now understand why people talk about the quarter system the way they do. It’s SO FAST!!!!!
Goals
1. Take care of my body.
Okay, we’re five weeks in. I’ve spent enough time staying up late and eating trash. It’s time to get that part of my life back together! I hope to get into recreational rock climbing here, and that’s my goal for this quarter—get my belay license! I’m also hoping to start a food journal to track what I eat from the dining halls.
2. Return to journaling and tracking my life.
It doesn’t have to be a lot, but I’d love to remember as many moments as I can from my time here before it all blurs together. I hope to write three things that make my happy every day, the way I did in China—it’d just be a couple minutes before bed.
3. Get a hold on my time management.
With my current schedule, my Tuesdays and Thursdays are almost entirely open, yet I somehow always find a way to waste the hours away. Every night, I hope to make smaller achievable daily goals to accomplish the next day.
Final thoughts
- I’m so in love with the community here. Soto Love is so real, especially on the third floor (literally all the way from Christina and Daniel to Jared and Aaron). The ASES community is really fun as well, but it definitely helped that I already knew Vishesh and clicked so well with Jason. I was also lucky to have a wide base of friends coming in, and it’s been really fun to catch up with everyone!
- I still don’t have a clue on what I want to do after graduating, but I’m leaning more and more towards an economics major!!!
- I’m so afraid of wasting the four years (less now!!) of time that I have here that I fear I’m wasting more time by being afraid.
- I always try to take advantage of classes and opportunities that I couldn’t find anywhere else but Stanford.
- I read my FERPA admissions file with the admission readers’ comments. It wasn’t anything I didn’t expect, but it definitely put into perspective how different my life could be if even one person was in a bad mood that day.
Away with Jessica 