Surabhi Beriwal

My final column, my first byline

We all have moments we operate on autopilot. For many of us, these moments are frequent during our first year at Duke, but I’m not sure when we adopt this cruising attitude. Maybe it begins with orientation week pushing us through the unfamiliar Durham heat from information sessions to hall meetings to social events with dormmates we don’t quite know. Maybe it’s sparked by our first class registrations when we aren’t sure if we’ll be engineers in a semester or how difficult the math classes here are. Maybe it’s heightened by applications for our summers or majors or post-graduate lives before we’ve even completed our first semesters, as we struggle to match pace with classmates who are better with plans and goals and lists than we are. Even in a current as fast as our university’s, it can feel most comfortable to just be swept along.