Not a Game to Win or Lose

By Anonymous / Spring 2022

Dear Me,

Hey! It’s me, of four years from the future, and no, since you are probably asking yourself right now, I’m not done with college yet. I know you are probably sitting at your desk contemplating your future right now, as all your friends have committed to all these different universities while you have chosen to go to community college. I know we must always keep ourselves up in this fast-paced society and life can be a hustle, that is how this society is built. But you know, sometimes it is important to catch a deep breath, slow yourself down and stay in the present. Over the past four years, I have learned many lessons that have taught me to stay who I am, to do what I think fits me most at that moment, and everything will be alright.

“We are unable to offer you admission…’’. It has been a long journey for you, and the very last thing you ever wanted was seeing that sentence written on most of the college admission letter that I received. As you opened each letter, you kept telling yourself that the next one will be better, until you realized you got rejected from six out of the nine colleges.

As a high school senior and a 17-year-old daughter, it felt like a failure. You have failed to make your parents proud. You have failed to be a good student. You have failed yourself when you see your friends committing to their colleges. You have failed to answer the question, “Where are you heading to for college?”.  You were peer-pressured when people around told you that community college is not as prestige as by going to a university.

All I want to tell you now, four years later, is that it will all be alright. I know you might be thinking that I’m speaking nonsense because I was you, I went through these things, and now I’m sitting here trying to tell you to not feel what you’re feeling right now. Well, let me tell you why, and spoiler alerts ahead of your future. In three years, you will go through the same application cycle as a transfer student, and guess what, this time it was not what you would expect of yourself. I got accepted to eight out of eight schools I applied to, including the top schools like UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD.

As I’m writing this to you right now, in just about 4 weeks, I will finish my first year at UCSD as a transfer student. I will admit that during my first year of college, I was still embarrassed and jealous when I see friends confidently told people the schools they were going to, and there was me, trying to restrain myself from seeing the high school friends and not talk about where I’m going to for school. I was also disappointed when the counselor told me it would take me three years to transfer out instead of two years. All the emotions from high school were still there, but as I spent my years through community college, I started asking otherwise questions from before. I started asking myself why I was embarrassed of who I am or where I go to school. I know as a teenager, you are surrounded by very eager and enthusiastic individuals, you feared losing against people. You try to compete with one another, making the idea of going to college for you were much like a game, you win if you’re going straight to college, otherwise you lose.

Calm down! You are not losing. There is nothing to be embarrassed of. Your parents sacrificed their lives back home to come here for you to have a better future, to be a better person. They did not come here to put you in a game for you to win or to lose, they wanted you to take advantage of the education system to improve yourself to be the best version of you no matter which path it takes you. Society will always be moving fast, and you will always feel like you are set up as a character in this never-ending game. I know you are constantly worried about the future. You keep thinking about what is going to happen in the future, what you are going to do, when you will transfer, whether you are going the right track.

Now that I think of it, I think a big part of these questions come from the pressure you get from society. You fear of losing this game, you fear of failing to meet society’s standard again. Trust me, thinking about all those questions will not help you become a winner of this game nor yourself because who knows what will happen in the future. I can tell you that many things I expected did not happen, and many things happened without my expectations. And yet, things that I did not expect often turn out to be one of the best decisions I have made. Of course, we will have to adjust ourselves with this society’s pace, but we can only adjust ourselves if we know where we are, who we are. I have realized that we cannot just keep chasing, trying to meet every standard in this society, overwhelming ourselves with our own questions and frustrations. Instead, we must break the norms, sometimes even take a step backward, look at what you’re doing right now and be mindful of your presence. Being in your presence does not mean that you are not thinking for your future, but means that you will learn from yourself. You are made of many imperfections, instead of using society’s and other people’s to fill up your gap of imperfections, I think you can only perfect yourself when you know what your imperfections are, that is what will make you win the game. I promise you, by knowing your presence, you are not going to be the winner of society, but to be the winner of your own. So, I hope you will take my words, be the best version of yourself and do not let anyone tells you otherwise.

Thank you and I am proud of you,

Your future self