For the purposes of this letter, let’s say college consists of two groups of things: those you’re afraid of doing and those you haven’t yet realized you’re afraid of doing. It could be because you haven’t heard of them yet, or you don’t think you want to do them, or maybe you feel you’re already prepared for them. Maybe they’re not scary things, but soon you’ll know that whether or not something is scary has nothing to do with whether or not we’re afraid of it.
You’re afraid of meeting your roommate; you’re afraid of not liking your roommate; you’re afraid your roommate won’t like you. You’re worried about gaining the freshman 15, or maybe you’re not, but then everyone else is talking about it and that makes you think you should be concerned. What if you eat the wrong food in the dining hall and get sick and your parents have to fly you home and you don’t get to finish the quarter? What if you decide you hate Evanston, you don’t have time to explore Chicago and you can’t imagine staying in this stuffy little suburb for four whole years? You’re scared you picked the wrong major, or the wrong school, or the wrong university altogether. Maybe you should have gone to a state school closer to home.
Maybe you’re worried that you did all the right things — picked the right school and the right major and the right dorm, roommate, classes, bedsheets, extracurriculars, Saturday night outfit — and it still won’t be enough. That’s the point of going to a school like Northwestern, right? We are the Upwardly Mobile Youth, preparing for careers in business and medicine and economics and politics and the ivory tower of academia. Every good decision takes us to a new crossroads, which leads either further up the ladder or down the longest chute. The safety nets are beginning to fall away. That’s a lot of pressure for a recent high school graduate leaving home for what is likely the first time.
But it’s also pressure you can handle. You got into Northwestern, which is proof enough that you can meet a challenge. If you don’t like your roommate, make friends outside your dorm so you have other places to hang out, or, if the situation is bad enough, apply to switch rooms. If you’re worried about gaining weight (don’t be) make an exercise plan, keep healthy snacks in your room and find friends to work out with you. If you get sick, go to Searle; the doctors there are fantastic, and they’ll help ensure you don’t miss an important class or meeting. If something awful happens and you have to take medical leave, so what? By the time you graduate, you’ll know plenty of people who have done the same.
If you’re feeling homesick and overwhelmed by Evanston’s maze of one-way streets, put up pictures in your room of friends and family, and spend more time talking to the people you miss. There’s no shame in calling your mom every day after lunch for a pep talk. I’ll even bet it ends up helping her just as much as it does you.
If you get to the mother of all worries, the one where you’ve done everything right but something still might go wrong, well, I only have one piece of advice for you: Take a look around. There are more than 16,000 students at Northwestern, about half of them undergraduates who are scared of all the same things you are, plus a few extra. If you find someone on campus who says they’re not afraid, they’re either lying or a robot.
Without fear, there would be no reason to go to Northwestern, no reason to try for anything at all.
Working toward something implies leaving something behind; we work hard precisely because we’re afraid.
If that seems too pessimistic a view for you, think of it like this: Fear is the opposite of hope. Fears drive us because they highlight the hopes that are at stake. Accept that fear is part of the equation, but know hope will always be the remainder.
Identify your hopes early on, and use them to get through the fears that try to shut you down. Remember what you’re working toward, and that when you get there, the worries will have turned into things you’ve overcome. Remember that you’re at Northwestern, that you were chosen to be here because you have the tools to get something important out of it. And when you get your diploma, stamped and signed and delivered with a handshake, remember that hope — hope despite fear — is what got you there.
