How do you survive freshman year? Kill your “vision.”
In high school, the best way to survive was always to make a plan. Did I have my safeties, targets, and reaches planned out when applying to colleges? Did I have a study plan for AP season? I couldn’t count the number of times a well-meaning adult asked, “What are your plans for next year?” The high school grind swiftly silenced my spontaneity.
Then, I got an acceptance letter, paid the Boston College enrollment deposit, and clicked on my major. Instead of a meticulous calendar of step-by-step instructions, my plan suddenly became vague: Go to Boston, then figure it out.
I coped with that uncertainty by using my imagination. I spent the summer creating a “vision” for my college life. I labeled a PDF map with all my classroom buildings and mentally photoshopped myself into Bapst library with perfect posture and preppy clothes. I pictured waking up early, hitting the gym, and grabbing coffee before my 11 a.m. classes. I imagined laughing over dinner with the intriguing people I followed on Instagram.
On move-in day, my decor came together exactly as I’d fantasized. That was where the overlap between my vision and reality ended.
On my first night, I ran into a girl I’d met online. She was from a different state, with a unique major and amazing style. She mentioned being close friends with other names I recognized from Instagram. As I was fantasizing about my new, cool, and diverse friend group, she announced: “I know I should be making new friends, but we’re so set with our group, we don’t really want to talk to anyone else, you know?” Just like that, my fantasy of a flawless friend group shattered.
Two weeks after move-in, my throat became sore and eventually morphed into a headache, a fever, and then a positive COVID-19 test. Nearly bedridden, I missed class and neglected homework, seemingly derailing my dreams of academic weaponry. Subsequent pneumonia thwarted my cardio plans. Even after returning to class, other health issues took their toll. Some days, I’m lucky if I can haul myself out of bed on time for breakfast at the Rat before my 11 a.m. classes.
Put simply, absolutely nothing about college is going according to plan. My “vision” is collecting dust behind my minifridge.
Does that mean I’m failing at college? For a while, I assumed so. Creating my vision began as a way to cope with uncertainty, but it soon spiraled into a series of self-imposed rules. Not only that, it set expectations that no one, let alone someone as chaotic as myself, could live up to. After all, I’m the type to alternate between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. bedtimes, finishing the assignment due in two weeks and starting the one due tomorrow.
On top of that, I’d just been uprooted from everything and everyone I knew and loved, pummeled with sickness and homesickness. Was it really such a shock that I couldn’t make it to the gym every day? Though I made “The Vision” in an effort to regain control, it ended up controlling me.
I’m not telling you to stop setting goals or being ambitious. I’m also not writing a diatribe against imagination. Goal-setting and visualizing are natural, inevitable, and often necessary ways to make your hopes concrete.
Instead, I’m warning you against projecting an image of perfection so intensely that it narrows your worldview and distracts you from taking opportunities as they come.
On that first night, I wandered into O’Connell House, bummed about my failed attempt to join my “ideal” friend group. I hadn’t planned on hanging around the pool table with strangers or joining them at White Mountain afterwards. Nor had I planned on watching a movie with them the following weekend. They are my closest friends so far, despite never being part of “The Vision.”
Likewise, spending weeks two and three only leaving my dorm room to cross the hall and shower was certainly not part of “The Vision.” It gave me plenty of unexpected free time to dedicate to my new job of virtually coaching my high school’s debate team. While I’d envisioned my job being solely a side hustle, pouring myself into it so wholly made me realize how deeply meaningful it is to me.
College doesn’t have to look the way you imagined for it to be worthwhile. Surviving freshman year isn’t about planning, but about adapting when the plan goes awry, making the most of things when you can, and rolling with the punches when you can’t. So, how do you do that?
Step one is to be gentle with yourself. Especially for perfectionists like me, or overachievers like many of us at BC, it’s easy to lose hope over small mistakes. So, acknowledge the difficulty of your circumstances and forgive yourself.
Step two is to communicate. When I told my professors about my health issues, I braced myself for their harsh replies, but was instead greeted with their warm, understanding emails. When I complained to my friends that my lungs were too destroyed to walk to the Mac mailroom, one of them showed up twenty minutes later at my door, package in hand. You have more resources here at BC than you think—you just have to take advantage of them.
Step three—the hardest part—is to let go. This isn’t high school anymore. There are no more colleges to impress. By virtue of being here, you’ve already proven yourself worthy. If something isn’t bringing you meaning, why keep it around? Even if that club or habit was an integral part of your vision, that doesn’t mean it will keep serving you.
By following these steps, you can kill the vision and turn off the projector that is casting illusions of perfection. Once you stop looking at these projections, you can learn to love what’s really there.
