Failure to do the Intended

By Linda Huynh

College would be different I assured myself. While there was newfound freedom gleaming on one end, there was also the obligation to start off the rest of my life the right way. The solution was simple – just find a balance for everything. After registering for my classes at orientation and planning out the rest of my four years of college, I felt secure about my future momentarily and thus sought out the social taste of college.

In high school, I was more or less a hermit. While I would not consider myself socially awkward or anything like that, I stuck to playing it safe. Conformity was the key to high school; I would go to some club meetings just because I wanted to be with my friends. Alternatively, I was guilty of doing other activities because I knew they would “look good” on college applications. By senior year, however, I realized that I was not enjoying myself as much as I could because I was not doing things for myself. Rather, I did things because I felt obligated to. Thus, I anxiously awaited the end of summer for a fresh start.

So my plan for first semester would be just to take the classes I needed and just explore college. Volunteering at clinics, working at a lab, and applying for internships would just have to wait. For now, I would just take it easy and see the hundreds of organizations where I could possibly belong. High school was over; now it was finally time to do things that I purely wanted to do. Since it was freshman year, everyone was a new face anyway, so there was no need to worry about cliques or getting judged anymore.

The plan was simple, the experiment not so much. At the beginning of the year I had told myself I would not do so many activities and would instead take academics seriously. It turned out that my first semester was just a repeat of high school on the level of involvement, except this time, with much lower grades. Second semester would be better, I told myself. All I needed to do was cut back on the amount of activities.

According to plan, I did cut back on the number of activities. Yet, the level of involvement with each of the remaining ones increased. I started off second semester on the right foot, acing my midterms and setting aside my activities. With this established, I turned back to the organizations I was involved with, one of which was the Vietnamese Student Association, or VSA. Its Culture Night was coming up, and the club needed members to act, dance, sing, or participate in other ways that would express the Vietnamese culture. With my A’s then firmly planted, I auditioned for the leading role. Somehow I managed to get it and thus began weeks of late night rehearsals.

The show turned out well, but my grades took an even worse beating by the end of the semester. Although VSA was not solely to blame, I felt that my involvement with activities sidetracked me once again from taking academics as seriously. While I do wish that I had focused more on my classes, I do not regret having been a part of activities in such a crucial way. For the first time in my life, I was doing things out of passion and interest, and that brought an irreplaceable level of contentment with myself. I was maturing into a more cultured young Vietnamese woman while simultaneously building relationships that could last a long time. What’s more, being involved allowed me the opportunity to become a leader early on, by already accepting an executive board position for next year, ready to contribute from what I have learned.

For these past few weeks of summer, I have been trying to get back on track. With starting research, going to summer school, and hopefully landing a clinical volunteer position, I have just the right amount of time to relax and reflect. While it is difficult by now to catch up with all the other pre-med students, I have revised and improved my plans while setting aside some back-ups. Now, I anxiously wait once more for the new school year so that I could get a second chance.