An Ode to Uncertainty

Coming in to freshman year, I had it all figured out. I would be a Sym Sys Major (Decision-Making and Rationality Track), breezing through the courses I’d picked out for every quarter of the next four years. On top of that, I was going to wrangle myself a research position, find a great summer job, sing in the only a cappella group worth joining, and meet my best friends for life, all by week five of Fall quarter. Piece of cake.

As you can probably imagine, my self-determined report card by week five was less than stellar: I didn’t get into my first-choice a cappella group (the horror), heard “come back in a few years” from one too many professors (who knew freshmen couldn’t decipher bleeding-edge computer science papers?), and discovered my coursework was more challenging than expected (it is Stanford after all). To top it all off, I woke up one morning to realize I felt foreign amongst the “friends” I was so sure would be soulmates. Consumed by the primal urge to stay afloat in the deluge of work, rehearsal, and internship interviews that dominated my day-to-day existence, I barely had time or energy to resolve the existential questions that haunted me on my pillow every night: Who can I rely on? What do I want to do with my life? Do I even belong here?

It’s so easy to think our lives will turn out exactly as we expect they will. But so much of the time, we end up being swept up by the fast pace of life on the Farm and deposited somewhere far from where we thought we wanted to go. As an ambitious person, I know firsthand how it feels when faced with the prospect of not achieving everything you set out to achieve. But plagued by anxiety or regret, it’s easy to forget that context matters; we’re so incredibly lucky to go to one of the best universities in the world, and, at our age, there’s no way we can or should be sure of almost anything. Besides, if there’s anything I’ve learned from my freshman year, it’s that things often have a way of working out--just not how and, perhaps more importantly, when you might expect. In my case, I ended up thriving in my classes, found myself embedded in several close-knit communities--some I thought I’d join (like a cappella) and some not--and, by the end of Spring quarter, made some great friends.

 As my freshman year progressed, I still pinballed between majors, kicked myself over midterms that “should” have gone better, and tossed and turned at night as I fretted about the years to come. But looking back, the times I felt the happiest were when I forgot about everything but the present and threw myself into interesting assignments, poured my soul out in song on stage, or put off work on essays or problem sets to have deep conversations with friends late into the night. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate forward-thinking as much as anyone. However, being comfortable with uncertainty provides comforting perspective when everything seems like it’s spinning out of control.

Brad Ross

Undeclared
Class of 2019

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