Recently, I've been thinking a lot to myself about my college experience, not because I want to romanticize the good old days (it hasn't even been a year since I graduated) or because I want to rewind the clock 4 years and start all over again, but because leaving it has made certain patterns with more or less, impossible to ignore now that I've had a lot more time to reflect and think back to a lot of the decisions that I've done with my twenty three years of life so far.
I'll preface this by saying that this is going to be maybe different than other things that I've posted before. And I understand that anyone can literally read this. And I've been back and fourth with myself for a while about publishing this or not on my blog, but I have decided that this might be my weird way of "staying in touch" with those people who I shared so many great memories who I no longer see or talk to anymore.... This is my way of saying.
"Hello, I am doing well, just busy with work, but I hope everything is going amazing for you. I'm sorry I don't respond to your messages. I promise I read them; I've just been trying to understand myself in this new phase of my life. And for this, I need to navigate on my own for a little bit first. But will see you soon! hopefully".
So this is me trying to say what has changed, and where my headspace is currently at.
I guess what I mean is that there is something in the self-agency of the college experience that feels missing in my life right now, which is kind of crazy because college in itself is full of its own constraints: stress and deadlines, but it's a specific kind of freedom that I miss. The freedom of being unfinished.
This whole idea your life is structured around this whole idea that you are still becoming, which means the consequences and nuances of your experimentation aren't permanent. This freedom allows you to change your mind. Allowed to be inconsistent. You can wake up one day and decide that you want to be a completely different person. And even if you fall, you're always going to be surrounded by your peers who are failing in their own ways. Always learning. Always growing.
And I think that's where ambition enters the story for me. Because for me, I've always been an "ambitious" person, and I think now, there's a special kind of self-hatred that hides inside of ambition.
I was always told me that I was a driven and hard working person. The kind of person who is given a problem can find a solution. That's no matter, "I'll always find a way". I mean, I worked hard, I cared and had empathy for others, I wanted to do well for myself. Those are all of the correct traits that tell you define a "good person". But beneath that, I think there was something a lot less noble.
I wanted to chase this idea of safety. I wanted to build a version of myself so high and mighty that I couldn't be questioned. I wanted a stack of proof so high that no one could look at me and tell that I didn't belong where I was, or somehow think that I had gotten lucky too many times. I wanted to outrun my own doubt by converting my life into a constant feeling of momentum and output. And I guess that the worst part of this is that at a place like Northwestern, the culture knows how to praise and reward high-functioning anxiety. Nobody is ever going to tell you that you're scared; they tell you that you're impressive. Nobody asks you what it costs; they ask you what your next step is going to be. You get used to this idea, which is constantly being exhausted, which means that you're doing something right.
And the weirdest part is that once people start calling you ambitious, you start performing it even when you’re tired of yourself. Ambition more or less becomes less like a choice and more like a reputation you maintain, because if you slow down, it feels like you’re betraying the version of you that everyone trusts. It’s a strange kind of pressure because you’re allowed to be uncertain, but only if you’re uncertain in a way that still looks impressive. You’re allowed to be tired, but only if your tiredness has results.
I feel like after graduation, this feeling and idea of uncertainty becomes a lot more private. You're still certain, but you're supposed to be competent about it. You're still unfinished as a person, but you're expected to be present as finished. And the mundane reality is that your own self agency becomes harder, not because suddenly you have no choices or free-will, but because every now and then a choice carries some weight, and every choice competes with maintenance. Either with maintaining your job, your apartment, your health, your relationship, your finances, or your future. Even the idea of rest becomes something you have to be intentional about.
And I don't want to make this come off as "oh, I hate working a corporate job" or "corporate life is boring and evil" because I don't even believe that either. Work can be meaningful and fulfilling. But I do think, though, that corporate life has a way of quietly, I guess I would say "flattening" people. Not through long hours and strict deadlines, but because in this new phase of life, you have learn how to speak in terms of action items and deliverables.
You have to become careful and efficient. And if you're not careful enough, you start filtering yourself even when nobody is asking you to do that. You start living life through this framework of production and efficiency. And then one day you'll look up and realize that your greatest fear wasn't hating your job but instead that you'll be doing amazing at your job and still feel like your life is still quietly shirking around it, that you're becoming a person who is excellent at work and only average at living.
And maybe the more brutally honest thing I could say right now is that I'm scared. Scared that if I don't fight for these things, I'll wake up in a few years having done everything right and still somehow feel like I missed living my own life.
I think the only way I know how to fight that fear right now is by getting more specific about what I’m actually trying to protect. I’m not trying to protect “college,” or a place, or even a version of my life that was objectively easier. I’m trying to protect the parts of me that felt most alive back then: the ease of being close to people without needing a reason, the permission to be unfinished without having to hide it, the ability to care about things just because they mattered to me, not because they were useful or impressive. I’m trying to protect the part of me that could move through the world without constantly translating myself into something legible, without always proving I deserved to be here, without turning every emotion into an action item. Because I’m starting to realize that adulthood doesn’t automatically take those things away—you just stop getting them by default, which means you either rebuild them on purpose or you slowly accept a thinner life as “normal.
I used to think the hardest part of college was surviving the stress, the deadlines, the pressure, the constant sense that you should be doing more. Now I think the harder part is leaving and realizing how much of my life was held up by the environment itself. I don’t want to go back, but I do want to carry something forward: the closeness, the aliveness, the permission to be unfinished without apologizing for it. If the last few months have taught me anything, it’s that those things don’t disappear... You just stop being handed them. And I’m trying to learn how to reach for them again, deliberately, before my life fills up with responsibilities and I forget what I was reaching for in the first place.