Today feels penultimate—shoutout to Lemony Snickett for teaching us that word way back when - penultimate week of classes. Penultimate clubs meetings. For me, penultimate column. We’re almost finished—and for me and the rest of my class, this time finished is final.
This whole week feels a little bit like that awkward moment when you’re saying goodbye to someone but not quite leaving yet—that lingering, not-starting-a-conversation, too-early-to-get-sentimental moment.
So I’m using this awkward time to talk about something that is awkwardly self-conscious but nevertheless important. I want to use this column to talk about…columns.
When younger students ask me for advice about how to Duke, I tell them, regardless of what they study: “write a column"—which is actually more general advice than it may seem, though I also mean it literally.
First, I’m asking them to constantly push themselves to decide what to believe. For three years, every two weeks, I’ve had to search around my consciousness for some shred of conviction. I’ve had to read news and observe my fellow students and pressure myself to take a perspective, and then clearly elucidate that perspective, and in doing so refine it or change it completely.
Sometimes I surprised myself by my own stupidity—sometimes before publishing, sometimes after. Sometimes I surprised myself by my own insight.
I hate that adage “college is a time to find yourself” or “college is a time for self-discovery.” I think finding yourself is a little tragic. When I stumble on beliefs I didn’t know I had, ones I didn’t craft but discovered, they’re usually shallow and wrong. College isn’t a time for finding yourself, for accidentally landing in activities that then make sense to continue for the sake of a less hectic resume. College is a time for deciding who you will be—what will be important to you, the perspectives you’ll take on the important things. I have benefited so much from being constantly pressed to perform this exercise so regularly. My thinking is sharper, more critical. My convictions are smaller but more powerful.
Second, I mean that they should speak up about these beliefs—particularly if they’re shy about doing so. In one of my favorite poems, "The Second Coming", William Butler Yeats writes one of the more important sentences I’ve ever read. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
Those to whom sharing themselves comes naturally and inspires little self-consciousness often lack the constant questioning of convictions that is necessary for sharp analysis and original ideas. To me, if you doubt yourself, there is no higher qualification for speaking up. Hearing from all perspectives—not just those born loud and fearless—heightens the quality of the public debate.
It’s also selfishly fulfilling. In the conversations I’ve had about columns with other students, administrators and people from outside the Duke community, I’ve learned so much about other people, and I’ve gained so much from them: interesting insights, tips about communicating better, new techniques for approaching problems.
It scratches some fundamental itch for people to know you. I think this is often confused for an itch for people to know of you. But I really mean the first—not to recognize a name or face but to really recognize a part of you, even 800 words of you, a single thought that you selected as your most interesting for that week. Just one person out there understanding and identifying and engaging with me has been a longtime cure for loneliness for me. It’s an odd truth that someone who has read my columns knows more about who I am than many of my friends do, just as fellow students in discussion courses can sometimes feel so oddly close, sometimes closer than those sleeping in a bed ten feet away every night.
So this is what I’m saying: write a column. And by that I mean click on the “Apply to be a Fall columnist button,” and I also mean participate in class discussions and write things, no matter what they are, and share them with people, and I mean open conversations with your friends that are more challenging but ultimately rewarding. Maybe this is some version of “be an intellectual,” but I think it’s closer to “be a critical thinker, and be a little bit public about it.” Don’t wait to discover who you are. Spend your days deciding who you’re going to be.
With that alliterative advice I’ve officially crossed into kitschy inspirational speaker territory, so I’ll take my leave for the penultimate time. Before I do, though, I want to say thank you. Thanks for the discussions and emails and comments and shares. Thanks for supporting and cheerleading and disagreeing. Thanks for reading.
Ellie Schaack is a Trinity senior. This is her final column of the semester.
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