In a bit of a surreal shock, something was different today: I had inputted the final draft of my college essay into the Common App. To the side of the page, every aspect of the application had a green check mark, family, education, testing; I was done. The funny thing is, despite having completed everything for all the colleges I would be applying to, nothing felt done at all.
Looking back at tediously putting everything into such an application controlling of my future, it felt like a pretty holistic embodiment of my life thus far. The aspects of my education, moving from my diverse involvement at my home high school to my heavy workload at OSSM; my test scores, from my ACTs/SATs to a five on AP European History or a four on AP Chemistry. And seemingly the two most characteristically defining parts of the application: the activities and the essay.
In many senses, it was relatively easy to fill out the activities section. From my heavy devotion to music, being a member of the varsity swim team, or serving as the programming captain of my robotics team, one could say I liked doing a lot of things. To me, that realization within my process of evocation prompted pure introspection. Where in the world was I going? Anytime I was asked that question, whether on the Common App or in person, my go to answer was engineering.
In reality, I was borderline on my choice; I was undecided. Sure, my want to become an engineer was a genuine desire, but over time, this answer seemed to become a placeholder. I had no honest idea of what I wanted to commit the rest of my life to, especially when I had so many career aspirations. I was naturally drawn to pursuing music performance. With my dad being a musician, there was always an influx of stories of the generally unforgiving pursuit to being successful in the realm of music. Having laughed at the unfortunate stories of my dad keeping the only food he could afford outside in the Wisconsin cold only to have blown away when he came back, I was never daunted by the similar hardships I would likely face.
At some point, I had developed a love for science, technology, engineering, and math. My inclination to music had lessened as I became passionate in my engineering classes and robotics. As I made my way to OSSM, my perception of the world changed once again; I only became more confused as to what I wanted to do. For better or worse, I fell in love with physics, and somewhere along the way I also picked up the desire to enter the field of medicine. If it came down to it, I could get an education in engineering, for example, only to enter medical school later, or start in physics only to move to engineering. Things went hand-in-hand with each other, further complicating my ability to make a decision.
Over time, some of these thoughts died out to others, but in the process of evoking my past to help my college applications, and consequently, my future endeavors, I was brought back to square one. I may be done with my college applications, but things were not even close to being done. How could I be done with a process to my future without having any definitive answer as to what I would do? This most distressing thought lingered constantly in my head; there would come a point where I would have to make a life-changing decision.
For the longest time, the idea of being undecided was my biggest fear as my friends said their aspirations without hesitation. As it stands now, being undecided has been my safe haven. I can dream on to what I want be, a musician in the Big Apple or an engineer for Apple. As for the answer to the question, where in the world am I going, there remains no better answer than to admit I’m moving forward undecided.