This one is for all the worriers and warriors out there, who were brave enough to give becoming Jumbos a shot – regardless of the outcome.
We feel it. The collective weight of fear, excitement, nervousness and (attempted) calmness lingers in the air, as the 1st of April creeps nearer. Soon, the final batch of admitted students will join the herd, to complete the Class of 2018.
For us Early Decision baby Jumbos, we cannot wait to scream “HELLO”, spam your inboxes, exchange stories, make friends and meet you on the Hill in just a few months!
Yet, the numbers tell a heart-wrenching story of reality – for every one student who celebrates, there will be four or more who will have to come to terms with disappointment.
I remember that dream of a 4 o’ clock morning when I was accepted. Once my heart rate came down a little, I messaged friends, family and mentors in different places to tell them the good news. Many congratulations poured in, but the one thing that resonated with me the most came from a wonderful teacher.
“Remember still ... You're special and worth it with or without this offer, okay? Always remember that,” she said.
And indeed, those wise words ring true. (I was sure they did, because they weren’t an attempt to console a disappointed me, but rather, sound advice that pulled me back to Planet Earth in my ecstasy.)
No matter which letter you open on the TAMS in a few days, know this: Know that you are a wonderful human being, and you are loved, no matter which college you’ll get to put up on your Facebook profile. You are not just an applicant, not a file, not a bundle of nerves squeezed into a few PDFs and uploaded onto the Internet. You are not your scores, your extra-curriculars, your interviews, your recommendation letters, or even your own essays.
You are much bigger than all those, and can never truly be summarized into a single file, as much as admissions officers try their best to assess you as human beings. Because that’s what it is – the admissions process is, at the end of the day, a subjective examination of submitted material from a sea of applicants, to sieve out a heartbreakingly select few.
You are enough, and you don’t need external outcomes to validate that.
In my corner of the world, the admissions process often depends much more on cold, hard numbers, placing very little (if any) emphasis on matters beyond the classroom. For a few months now, I have been surrounded by brilliant friends – scholars, tinkerers, athletes, geeks, leaders and more – and watched them struggle so much just to get into university. I come from systems where a missed A means a string of rejection letters, where the lack of a few points on a standardized test can make the world of a difference.
Often, I think to myself, this shouldn’t be so complicated. The matter of getting into university should not go hand-in-hand with so much emotional distress, trembling expectations and stringy hearts. But it does, precisely because of that, right? This matters so much, because we put all our hearts into this, knowing all we can do thereafter is to hope for the best, and brace ourselves for whatever is to come.
Thinking about all this, a certain saying comes to mind – “The best is yet to be.” (#TBIYTB) In Singapore, my high school embraced this motto to the core, and we tried our best to live it out in every sense. Other schools jokingly dismissed it as meaning “you guys will never be good enough”, but truly, I believe the essence of the motto is this:
Our story is unfinished. We are the brave writers of our own narratives, and it’s only beginning. There will be more mountains to scale and more valleys to rest in. All these adventures lie ahead, waiting to unfold. They remind us that there is Something Bigger on the horizon, that all of us still have so much to learn. Indeed, we will always have everything left to learn, to try to fill the room left for improvement.
So, we keep moving, keep the faith and keep celebrating everyone and everything around us.
No matter what happens in a few day’s time, thank you for having enough heart to want to be a Jumbo, to be entrusted with a motto as big as “Pax et Lux”, to be a part of the institution’s narrative. If you receive great news, congratulations – go celebrate, and the few hundred ED-ers are here to share your joy; if you are disappointed, know that it is not a judgment of your worth, but just the challenge of too many amazing applicants and too little space, or perhaps a suggestion that you will find a better home somewhere else. Whatever it is, I trust that you will end up in a community you can call home for this next chapter of your life, learn to bless and be blessed, and keep figuring out the big old question of who you are.
The world lies ahead of you, and as Dr Seuess’ wisdom goes, “It’s opener out there in the wide open air!” This is your story. This is your oyster, your adventure, your journey, your very own unique collection of experiences.
So go forth and adventure, because at the end of the day, it’s who you are and the heart you bring into all you do that really matter. After all, the rest is still unwritten and the best is, truly, yet to be.