Spring is in the air! Clouds of pollen roll across campus, inchworms descend from oak trees and senior columnists publish their lofty epistles reflecting on their four years at the place they are about to leave. This week, I hope to do the same while adding a piece of advice I found missing in previous columns—that patience really is a virtue. At some point in their four years at college, everyone feels the stress and frustration of uncertainty and perhaps failure in their academic and/or personal lives. Maybe you still seek the right major or a solid friend group. If I could offer one piece of advice to someone in that position it is this: be patient.
One of my favorite sayings is that everything will work out in the end, and if it didn’t work out it’s not the end. Time and again that saying has proven itself true, yet every day I still find myself failing to recognize its truth.
Take, for example, the common trope of a junior fearing graduation, a legitimate concern. I for one found myself unnerved by the prospect of having to enter the real world so soon. But college takes four years for a reason. This sounds obvious at first, but think for a moment about the fact that college is designed to consume four years of your life. If, at the end of your sophomore year you have not yet found the perfect major, that’s fine. If at the end of your junior year you are not yet ready to graduate, that’s fine. You are not ready because you’re not supposed to be ready.
Think about how you learned to drive. You probably took a course that included both classroom and behind-the-wheel instruction. At the halfway point of the course, you were not yet ready to get behind the wheel alone on the interstate. That’s because you weren’t supposed to be ready.
Similarly, college is a four-year process that has to run its course. When you find yourself worried that you are missing out on an opportunity or uncertain about the future, realize that it’s part of the plan. As an underclassman, I often found myself worried that I could not chart a very specific path of classes all the way to graduation. I realize now that you aren’t supposed to know every step from the very beginning.
On the other hand, a healthy dose of urgency is never a bad thing. I by no means recommend sitting idly while your college years pass you by.
Every week, radio legend Casey Kasem ended his American Top 40 by broadcast with the line: “keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.” This quote in fact originated with Theodore Roosevelt who said, “Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.” Both quotes convey the sentiment that life requires a careful balance of ambition and reality. Don’t let your vision carry you so high that you loose track of day-to-day life. Similarly, don’t let the day-to-day occupy you so much that you look up in 40 years and find yourself dramatically off course.
At the heart of this philosophy is patience. In my experience, it is far easier to hold oneself back for fear of missing out on the perfect opportunity you believe waits just around the corner. You may pass over the photography class you really want to take because of a prerequisite for the major. Or you may pass on a job offer because it is not exactly what you want in a job. When Roosevelt talks about patience and this balance, he is cautioning against straying too far toward indulgence or self-discipline. All things in moderation.
If I could write to myself four years ago, this would be my advice: be patient. You will get lost, you will try and fail, you will eventually find the right path, and it’s all supposed to take time. If life could be figured out in a few weeks, what would be the point? Spend a little more time enjoying the struggle instead of worrying about it. When you look back, you will be amazed at how the journey changed.
My freshman year I took Bio 201. In the front hallway of the BioSci building, on an office door, hangs a cartoon. The cartoon displays two graphs, each representing success as a function of time. The left one entitled, “What people think it looks like” shows a straight line toward the upper right corner, “success.” The right, entitled, “What it really looks like” shows a line that curves back over itself left and right, up and down, ultimately landing in the same place. Looking back as a senior, I could never imagine as a freshman how much that cartoon would come to represent my time here. As I prepare to graduate, I see that my path zig zaged all across this campus. But ultimately I ended up in the right place, and that is what ultimately matters.
Brian Hopkins is a Trinity senior. His column runs on alternate Wednesdays.
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