to be alive
I'm going to do what I love and I am going to love what I do. It is not a question. Coming to Harvard, I've found myself being swept away by the current a lot. It's so easy to lose sight of what I loved to do and what I came to do when everyone here has been saying the same things at me. "My name is xyz, I'm a [insert year here], and I'm going to concentrate in [econ, a type of math, computer science, medicine]," - all perfectly fine things for me to know of course. But after hearing this over and and over and over and over again, I began to lose sight of who I was and who I am and who I've been proud of. I've never been one to value titles, numbers, statistics, lack of human interaction and yet I've come here and found myself doubting myself, which I guess is pretty normal for a college freshman but I've found pretty jarring because it was so unexpected.
But nope.
I'm not doing it.
I said it my freshman year of high school and I'm going to say it again.
I refuse to engage in any type of rat race. I will always only do what I love and I will always love what I do. If I am unable to stick by this, I have fundamentally lost a piece of myself and am now lost.
Frances (and every other struggling freshman out there) - don't be swept away by this current. The ocean is too big to be controlled by one current going in one direction for one type of people. Start swimming how you want, where you want, for what you want. It doesn't matter if you get pushed back a couple of times. It doesn't matter if you get lost a million times over. As long as you know at your core you're doing what you want to do, you can do it and you'll love yourself for it in the long run.
Don't ever compromise your happiness because you want to fit in.
Fitting in is no fun. It never has been and never will be.
Roll around in the snow, the grass, the pile of dead leaves, the lake puddle in front of John Harvard... I don't care. Don't be like everyone else. Make primitive noises at your friends, laugh like a hyena in the library, be a nuisance to society.
Just...
I just want to live.
I just want us to live.
I want to feel alive.
So
alive.