A
s someone who was born and raised
in Ann Arbor, people always ask, “Do
you regret staying home for college?”
Maybe they are shocked that I would elect
to live so close to my parents, high school
friends or the familiar streets of my child-
hood. Maybe they aren’t surprised at all,
picturing every Ann Arborite as born with
maize-and-blue streaks in their hair, proph-
esied as a future Wolverine. Maybe they envi-
sion college as the time to leave the nest, and
that true growth comes from the discomfort
of change.
In reality, when I stepped onto campus in
2017, I was happy to be close to my parents. I
made it a point to meet new people and it was
then that I went to my first ever Michigan
football game. So while I didn’t quite leave
the nest by coming to the University of Michi-
gan, my experiences here have taught me that
you can still grow even if you physically stay
in the same place.
Consider this: A brown building with grey
scaffolding and green ivies slithering up
its side. If I told you only of this image, you
might be picturing many different locations,
and most likely, none would evoke deep feel-
ings of community, stress, inspiration or love.
You’d just be imagining a building. But if I
asked you to consider the Hatcher Graduate
Library, with its quiet marble steps and a lab-
yrinth of stacks; or the Law Quadrangle, with
the daunting gaze of stained glass over sun-
bathing students; or even the Shapiro Under-
graduate Library, with its suspicious smells
and people taking phone calls in the stairwell,
then they become more than places or struc-
tures. They become breathing, living things,
full of memories and relationships and emo-
tions because it’s not the places that shape us,
it’s the people and experiences inside of them
that do.
I didn’t grow any more or less because I
stayed in Ann Arbor, I just grew in different
ways. It’s a theme that I’ve explored more
and more as my senior year at the Univer-
sity comes to a close: Who would I be if I
made different decisions? If I could go back,
would I have done things the same? What
are my regrets? For a while, I lamented over
the classes I took or didn’t take, the places
I lived, the programs I applied to. I thought
about the times I stayed in instead of going
out, the sports games I never attended, the
friendships I turned away from and the ones
I maintained. In those moments of intense
introspection and regret, I have felt the urge
to reach out to the younger people in my life,
to help them avoid the mistakes I made, to
curate their college lives into the most fun,
diverse and educational experience possible.
But while the media might try to tell us
differently, there is no formula for a perfect
college experience. It arguably does not exist
at all. There is only your college experience,
and assigning it objective values of success —
like if you had a close-knit group of friends,
met the love of your life or got a prestigious
internship — or values of failure — like if you
didn’t get honors, had trouble finding your
people or spent a semester depressed — will
leave you permanently unfulfilled, suspended
in air, reaching for the preconceived notions
and examples that would validate your expe-
rience. Indeed, if you spend all of college
trying to curate the “best four years of your
life,” you will only end up relying on other
people and their experiences as indicators
of the merit of your own. And the best way
to go through college is in your own organic,
unique and personal way.
I’m reminded of a piece I wrote at the end
of my freshman year when I was a columnist
for The Michigan Daily’s Opinion section.
When I pulled up the old document to com-
pare it to this one, I found myself laughing
endearingly, if not a little critically, at the
memory of myself at the time, a self reflected
in that prose. I was 18 years old and freshly
heartbroken; I didn’t have many friends nor
plans for the summer. That anxiety, sadness
and resentment are palpable in my words: “A
lesson I’ve learned in college is that vulner-
ability usually comes with hurt. To show real
emotion, to allow yourself that honesty, will
lead to pain.” And while in that column I ulti-
mately argue that being vulnerable is what
gives life its meaning, the passage communi-
cates a loss of innocence, an introduction into
adulthood.
That’s a big part of college, one that is dis-
cussed less than the more tangible introduc-
tions to adulthood, like cooking for yourself
or paying your own bills. To be sure, not all of
us arrive at college with bright-eyed naivety
and idealism, but for many, this campus is
where we experience our first blows of lone-
liness, betrayal and insecurity. It’s where we
start realizing the uglier aspects of the world
and humanity, adjusting and maturing in the
process.
A
nd yet, college is also where we often
experience the euphoria of an awak-
ened mind and stimulating course-
work, feel first love and touch or meet the
people who inspire and shape us. It’s where
you can walk into any classroom and almost
hear the humming of eager minds at work,
enter a campus bar and be met with sticky,
tipsy smiles or just simply be studying for
class when you realize, Whoa, this is my pas-
sion, this gives me life.
This dichotomy of highs and lows is one
I began understanding even in my first few
months at Michigan, and I wrote about it in
the same freshman-year column: “I often
experienced isolation and togetherness within
the same day. I felt impassioned in one class
and resigned in another. I balanced finding
myself with finding someone for me.” Indeed,
at an age and in a setting that is so unpredict-
able, so charged with energy and hormones
and curiosity, we never quite know what we
want, what we’ll feel, what we should do.
To me, though, that’s the beauty of col-
lege, and one of the things I’ve enjoyed the
most during my time at the University. With
so many opportunities and people, each new
experience has been like the tap of a tiny chis-
el, each one slowly shaping me into the per-
son I am today as I type at my desk, my cap
and gown hanging proudly next to me. Some
of those taps are gentle, leaving a smooth, soft
finish. Some of those taps are painful; they
break off too much, stinging even in memory.
But what I’ve learned is to not scrutinize the
small cracks in the sculpture, but to rather
step back and appreciate the art as a whole.
Of course, this is easier said than done. I
have by no means reached the pinnacle of
maturity and understanding when it comes to
college or even adulthood. I’m still often reck-
less with the chisel, and at times I have trouble
seeing the value in the blemishes that have
inevitably occurred over the last four years. I
can also imagine that one day I will look back
on this column, just as I did with my freshman
year one, and chuckle at how little I had yet to
discover, how much I claimed to understand
with these words.
But that’s exactly what growth is, and just
as I used writing to understand the passage
from childhood to adulthood back in freshman
year, I am using it now to try to put words to
the feeling I get when someone asks me, “Do
you regret?” I can now confidently respond
with a no, because I find it a privilege to have
had these four years at the University of Mich-
igan, and I am grateful for every little imprint
it has left on me, from the classes that added
layers to how I see the world, to the nights I
scream-cried in the shower and all the way to
this newspaper, that let me, in streaming, cha-
otic sentences, write about it all.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE
Wednesday, April 21, 2021 — 13
Rewriting college
BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT