Published: May 10, 2022

This is a stream of consciousness.

I graduated from college yesterday, and it doesn’t feel real. Perhaps it doesn’t feel real because I’m pretty much the same person I was the day before—life is a continuum, and we plant social milestones along this continuum to make meaning out of our sole progression toward the end. (Did not mean to sound nihilistic here.) I was talking to a friend at 2am the night before we formally had to be moved out of our dorms about how the next time I’ll see a lot of these people is probably at someone’s wedding. Social milestones.

College is interesting because it forces you to undergo relatively major changes as a young person. When I was a high school senior, I was ready for the “next step”—continuing in my education by going to a place that I (felt like I) knew would provide me with more personal freedom, more intellectual stimulation, and more people who had similar levels of ambition as I did. Looking back now though, it wasn’t so much of a linear continuation in my life experiences or education; it was a journey that I chose to embark on, where I would meet new people and discover new things about myself and the world. (Of course, this is very much informed by the fact that I attended an out-of-state elite institution.) College whisked me away from the prior comfort of my life, and the people and places that provided me that comfort. It forced me to change lifestyle-wise, but it also accelerated my growth and expanded my horizons.

I came to college with the expectation that I’d be around people who had goals and were driven to meet those goals—and that expectation was met. What I didn’t know is that I’d meet people whose lived experiences were literally outside of my worldview when I had met them. Prior to college, I had no idea that industries like investment banking or consulting existed, or that people could come into college already knowing what jobs at which companies they wanted to have by the time they graduated. I didn’t know people I could personally meet in real life could even be as wealthy as many of the people I met at Duke were. Aside from the “eliteness” of it all, I really liked that so many people I met throughout college had interests that were completely disjoint from mine: real estate, poker, K-pop, prosthetics, different kinds of tea. Being “nerdy” and having interests was never weird or looked down upon at Duke. We all coexisted as different people in the same space, and that exposure to others’ passions is something I’m incredibly grateful for.

One of the biggest things I grappled with throughout college is finding a sense of self. This was not in a competitive sense—I never felt the pressure of going head-to-head with others for anything in high school nor college (even though I likely was in many cases), probably because I was lucky enough that both my high school and Duke weren’t cutthroat environments. When I say finding a sense of self, I mean going through the process of figuring out how I have changed as a person throughout my time at Duke. In high school, there were a lot of explicit rules that were strictly enforced: no chewing gum allowed, slotted times for classes and passing periods, and of course, a dress code. I was eager to get away from this and go to college, where I felt like I’d have more personal freedom. While that was true, Duke had its own rules too—except Duke’s rules were mostly implicit, never strictly enforced, and arguably much more confining and destructive to a young person’s journey of trying to find themselves than any high school rules. These largely unspoken rules were written by all of us (the school’s administrators, staff, alumni, and student body), who have the collective desire to protect the status of Duke as an institution that would presumably become such a large part of students’ identities for the rest of our lives. These rules encourage us to remain loyal to Duke and to act in favor of Duke, because we are so heavily associated with it. After all, this is the place where we chose to spend four years growing to become young adults who were ready for the “real world.” These rules are the weight that we carry with us, and they place immense pressure on students to live their lives in certain ways—ways that often lead to complacency and acceptance of the status quo in exchange for signals of status such as wealth and positions of power.

A lot of students come to elite universities wanting to change the world with fire in their hearts—I would imagine that this desire to do so at least somewhat contributed to our acceptance into such universities. But these implicit rules that we all quickly learn once we step onto campus, rules that are shaped by our institution’s relationships with the world, can be quick to tame those fires.

From this angle, I would describe my journey of finding my own sense of self at Duke one of coming in with certain passions, having the pressure of wanting to abide by Duke’s “rules” suppress those desires, and reasserting those passions and re-discovering the type of impact I want to have on the world. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this experience isn’t unique—not to me, and not to Duke students. I’ll save the whole spiel about how the startup world really helped me to solve this struggle for another time, but at the end of the day, these rules are a large part of what pushed me to grow at Duke and think more critically about what I actually want to do with my life. By putting me in an environment where it felt like everyone needed to have everything figured out, Duke actually helped me figure out how to thrive on uncertainty.

After almost sleeping in a tent for almost two months in Krzyzewskiville just to see Zion Williamson blow out his shoe in the first five minutes of a game, participating in professional and social organizations, spending a beautiful summer in Seattle, and taking a whole year away from campus thanks to the pandemic to breathe and reflect, I have so much to be grateful for.

I must admit that obtaining the fancy little leather folder that encases the actual piece of paper affirmed for me that while choosing to attend college might be because of the degree rewarded at the end, college itself is not actually about the degree. When I look back on these past four years, I might remember the endless nights of studying in my library (inevitably romanticizing “the grind” as everyone somehow manages to do looking back, even though we knew that most of it was unpleasant to endure), but I most definitely will remember the moments that made college what I really felt like college was about for me: the people and the personal growth. Even as I’m writing this on the plane back home, the memories of working on certain assignments for certain classes are already fading...but the Duke basketball games, the late night drives to Cookout or Heavenly Buffaloes, and the great conversations about weird interests and simply just being a Duke student living with these rules will stick around for a long while.

I don’t know when I’ll ever be back in North Carolina, but I am certainly excited for what’s next.