12.5%

People tell you that you can never predict what your college experience will bring. From the minute your application to a particular university is accepted, almost every college student spends hours imagining their perfect lives at their chosen university, creating lofty expectations for the presence they will have on their future campuses. But most of the time, before this image crystallizes in our heads, our college experience begins, and we actually have to figure stuff out for real.

I had two years to think about what my life would be like at Duke (check out my first blog post for why I had two years to think about Duke). I used to spend hours roaming on Google Earth, trying to virtually simulate what my Duke experience would be like. I would watch Duke basketball highlight tapes, listening closely to the melody of the Cameron Crazies and wondering how my voice would fit into their symphony. I catalogued the different permutations of majors and minors I could pursue and which degrees would help me land the job I wanted in the future. I thought I had my Duke experience planned out and calculated. But I didn’t—and that’s okay.

For one, college is a lot harder academically than I initially expected, particularly after not having studied for two years. High school classes are straightforward in the sense that they require us to learn specific content and apply it within certain constraints. Even a college-level “AP” course is relatively regimented in its instruction and mode of assessment. On the other hand, college courses take concepts that may not appear difficult on the surface and force us to examine them at a far deeper level. I wasn’t used to struggling like this; in high school, I could always pull off a performance no matter how much I procrastinated. But in college, if you haven’t done your due diligence with your textbook and practice problems, it is almost impossible for a normal person (like me) to succeed. I learned this slightly too late, and my sleep schedule paid the price.

This was even more difficult when I saw how some of my peers handled their academic pursuits. In my introductory programming class, when I would be struggling to solve a single problem, some of my classmates would finish the entire activity in 10 minutes. In my linear algebra class, when I had to study for days on end to get a passing grade on a midterm, some of my peers could study for 10 minutes before the test and get a perfect score with ease. It didn’t feel fair; what did they have that I didn’t? But I think it also made me realize that part of the beauty is in the struggle—enjoying the grind rather than dreading it.

The talent of our student body is also something I had to come to terms with. I always knew that I would meet gifted people at a school like Duke, but I don’t think I really understood just how talented people my age could be. The person next to you will be working a software engineering job at Bloomberg this summer; another will be a nationally recruited lacrosse athlete who is also a biomedical engineer; the next person will be the founder of an ed-tech startup; another will have worked on AI solutions for power plants in Argentina; someone else will have taken a gap year to solo scale mountains in Guatemala; the next will be a Duke of Edinburgh award recipient; another will be a political activist from Burma; and someone else will be working on a commercial for Krispy Kreme. The students in my class have done extraordinary things and continue to do so.

It made me wonder what I had done to deserve to study here when, frankly, none of my accomplishments felt that outstanding. Sure, I had done some cool things, but most of them paled in comparison to my peers’. What’s more, my classmates were two years younger than me yet far more accomplished. To a degree, my case of impostor syndrome—something I’d heard about college students facing in their freshman year—was slightly more exacerbated. But after a while, I realized that even if I was slightly less accomplished, I had still been afforded the opportunity to study at this institution, just the same as my peers. And it was up to me to make my experience worthwhile for myself, rather than contemplate whether I deserved to be here.

Socially, college is also a unique experience. A couple of months before I enrolled, I had a conversation with one of my mother’s closest friends from college. He told me how his closest friends today are still his friends from university, even though they went to school together nearly 30 years ago. He also mentioned that it becomes progressively more difficult to form close friends post-college, as people disperse and become more insular as they mature.

When he told me this, I didn’t think much of it. But after a semester, I can truly say that his words held true. College presents itself as a social hub: it brings a group of talented, like-minded, and driven individuals to study and live together on a single campus. With everyone in the same place, it is impossible to get from one spot to another without running into someone you know and striking up a conversation. This is what makes the American college experience so desirable.

Rather than solely focusing on studying and doing homework, it relishes the connections and relationships we forge with one another. What makes college truly special are the shared experiences—particularly outside of the classroom—that we live through with our classmates. It’s the dining hall dinners that stretch far too long, pushing homework to the back burner. It’s the late-night conversations in the common room that somehow turn into sunrise. It’s the weekend parties that create stories you’ll retell for years, and the nights in Cameron Indoor when you bounce so hard after an Isaiah Evans 3-pointer that your knees are sore the next day. It’s even the ‘lock-in’ study sessions with friends that accomplish more laughter than learning. These are the moments that define life at Duke—ones that make the campus feel like home. These moments are the reason people come from all corners of the US and the world to study at a school like Duke because, quite frankly, I could receive the same academic education for just a couple of dollars in library fees.

As I’m making my way back home, I’m excited to see my family and tell them about my experiences in my first semester. I miss my family; it’s been a while since I’ve seen them. I’m also excited to meet my friends from home and catch up on their university experiences and beyond. But at the same time, I’m grateful for the experiences I’ve had over my first semester at Duke. It’s a little surreal to think that I’m already 12.5% done with college when it still feels like I’ve only just begun.

I’ve always liked the quote from Andy Bernard in The Office: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” I’d like to think that my freshman year will be a part of “my good old days,” and I’m so excited to go back for the spring and enjoy what else freshman year has to offer. At the same time, I’m also aware that I need to enjoy the rest of this year as much as I can because I know that these times and experiences with my friends will never truly come back.

Thank you, Duke. I’ll see you in a month.