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

