I’ve always been fascinated by probabilities.
I grew up in the horse capital of the world, Ocala, Florida, and my family immigrated to the United States from Colombia because of horse racing.
I remember seeing numbers on the bottom of the screens — 5:1, 7:2, 10:1 — and asking my uncle, a retired jockey, what they meant. He told me those were the odds. Horses with higher odds pay out higher, and if you’re risk averse you can always play the favorite and win back a few bucks.
As I grew up, I remember catching the Hunger Games bug and hearing all my friends repeating the infamous line “May the odds be ever in your favor,” and whistling the theme before we entered the room for every AP exam.
One study I always think back to says there’s a 30% greater chance of a son being gay after each subsequent birth a mother has — the data’s out on lesbians or bisexuals, unfortunately.
I also, for some reason, have a 66% chance of getting the same person every time I do the Marriage Pact.
And let’s not forget — we all had a 7% chance of getting into Northwestern.
While improbable, I could’ve found myself on a random city corner and gathered up the courage to say hi to every single person I’ve met on this campus, but I doubt it. Instead, I also see the figure as the probability that I’d get to meet the people that mean so much to me now.
I would’ve never bet that I would have the opportunity to cover a gay wedding during the Chicago rat hole pandemonium. I would’ve bet even less that I’d witness my colleagues stand up to our publishing company after the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office charged students for parodying our newspaper.
I would’ve thought it out of the realm of possibility that the undecided high school senior I met while packing my things on the last day in the newsroom — after that same hectic quarter — would text me a few months later and let me know she was coming to Northwestern.
I would’ve never predicted in a million years that I’d run into a past lover on a random street in Berlin, or that I’d meet a professor’s past friend on the peak of a Patagonian mountain.
We’ve already beat the odds to get here — so why give up now? Why not continue making impossibilities more probable?
As we enter this new stage of life, I think the worst thing we can do is resign ourselves to the status quo — to subject ourselves to a reality where we never knew what was possible because we never pushed further.
Even when you think your odds are low, bet on yourself — Northwestern already has.
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