The air smelled faintly of chives and sesame oil as my grandma placed another dumpling in my bowl. My cousins were playing video games on the couch, and my relatives had formed an assembly line in the kitchen. Outside the window, the sounds of Beijing in the summer drifted through, and for the first time since Ivy Day, I wasn’t thinking about Penn.
Until my phone buzzed.
And it didn’t stop.
When it got to the point where I could no longer ignore it, I unlocked my phone and found more than a hundred unread messages flooding my notifications.
One group chat was warning everyone to register for classes the moment add/drop/swap opened because it’s first-come, first-served. Another was debating which courses were GPA tankers and which professors to avoid. A third had already moved on to club applications, networking, internships, and research.
My stomach sank. I had spent the last few hours eating dinner with my relatives, but it seemed like everyone else had spent them getting ahead.
For the rest of the day, all I could think about was how late I was to registration, how I only got one of the classes I wanted, and how the possibility of a lower GPA would diminish my chances of getting into graduate school.
As I waved goodbye to my relatives at the airport the next day, I suddenly realized that I had let my anxiety about missing the start of course selection prevent me from fully enjoying the little time I had left with them.
SEE MORE FROM:
And that’s when it hit me.
I was treating Penn like the next college application.
In hindsight, having this “admissions” mindset shouldn’t surprise me. Many of us — myself included — have spent the last four years training ourselves for exactly that. We joined clubs because they showed leadership. We pursued research because it showed intellectual curiosity. We started nonprofits because it showed initiative. Even the hobbies we genuinely loved often came with an underlying thought: “Will this help me stand out in college applications?”
Eventually, optimizing our lives stopped being something we consciously did and instead became embedded in the way we think. That mindset has successfully brought us to one of the most ambitious, pre-professional universities in the country, but the danger lies in continuing to feed into it while we’re here.
At Penn, it’s easy to become lost in applications for the 800+ clubs offered, overwhelmed by internship recruitment, and watch casual conversations that used to be about simply getting to know someone morph into “networking.” None of these things are unreasonable, but when every decision is seen through the lens of “what comes next?”, it’s easy to forget to enjoy where you are now.
Rising first-year Kirara Takaoka admitted she felt anxious when college seemed to begin long before move-in. “I was… more [stressed] after advanced course registration ended and the add/drop/swap period started. The idea of leaving my schedule [to] chance or not achieving my academic plan for Penn wasn’t great.”
This is a feeling many of us can recognize, and it reflects how college can begin to feel like something we’re expected to optimize. Ironically, that’s exactly what will make us miss some of the most valuable parts of a Penn education. Before we’ve even set foot on campus, we’re already worried about whether one incorrect decision could derail the next four years. However, it’s important to remember that the conversations that challenge your worldview won’t be scheduled six weeks in advance, and the class that unexpectedly becomes your favorite probably won’t be the one everyone told you to take. Some of the most transformative experiences in college happen precisely because they weren’t planned for.
When I think back on the dinner in Beijing, it’s not because of the hundred notifications or the feeling that I was behind. It’s because for a few hours, I wasn’t thinking about my GPA, my internships, or graduate school. I was playing with cousins I only get to see every few years, listening to family stories I laugh at every time until my stomach hurts, and letting myself live life unapologetically.
As the Class of 2030 arrives on Locust Walk this fall, I hope we remember that the most important thing we do here might be the thing that never appears on a transcript, an application, or a LinkedIn post. After all, the greatest waste of time isn’t doing something that never ends up on your résumé. It’s spending four years believing that that’s the only kind of thing worth doing.
Tracy Xie is an incoming first-year student studying philosophy, politics, and economics from Syosset, NY. Her email is tracyxie@sas.upenn.edu.
