It's 3:30 am on a chilly fall Wednesday. I am sitting in my dorm room, having just returned from the radio station, with pages of Symbolic Logic notes spread out before me. My logic test is in less than six hours, and the problems are literally all Greek to me. There is so much that I don't understand. I have no idea whether I should be studying for the test or trying to finish the homework that I neglected. Either way, there's no way I'm going to do well on this test. I just want to pass. And I want to sleep. Before I fall asleep, this is the thought beating at the back of my brain: Did I peak in high school???

I've heard stories about kids like that, honor students who left behind legacies at their small-pond high schools to be met with mediocrity when they finally reach college. We are the generation that has been awarded and praised and congratulated since preschool. We have worked to impress with our grades, our tests, our extracurriculars, because we've been taught that a good future depends on getting into a good college. But once we get there? We're on our own, and it's scary as hell.
Of course, it's easy to imagine that it will never happen to you. You think, "It's different for me. I can do it." But in college, we all start from square one. It's so easy to forget the advantages that propped us up throughout high school. From the moment you walk into your first college class, you have to prove to the professor that you deserve to be there. You have to make your own legacy from scratch, surrounded by incredibly smart people, all while navigating your own independence.

Sometimes, when I'm in a bad mood, I start to compare my college grades to those of my high school days. I think of all those easy A's and my brain just screams disappointment. But I know that my memory of high school is rose-colored. Those grades were good out of necessity. They reflected my desire to get into a good school, to impress my teachers, to compete with my friends, but nothing deeper. I took the classes I was supposed to take, and I got the grades I was supposed to get, but I knew something wasn't absorbing. Every year, even just a week after exams, I would marvel at how much of that information had flown out of my mind. I had studied European History for a year, apparently, and while I could still tell you the order of the English monarchs (James, Charles, Oliver Cromwell, James again), their significance has already drifted away into the recesses of my mind.

But during the spring semester of freshman year at university, I
stumbled upon an unfamiliar feeling. Something I hadn't experienced in a long time. It was the feeling of finally creating things I was proud of, of genuinely enjoying what I learned. Part of it was due to my reformed work ethic. I knew I could no longer coast like I had in high school, and to get the grades I wanted, I would have to put in effort like never before. But another factor was that I really liked the classes I was taking. See, high school is about preparing you for college. College is about preparing you for your life. It allows you to finally study the things that make you happy, or at least the things that make you wonder, the things that you want to carry with you into "the real world." That spring, I lost myself in novels and essays and articles for classes that I was excited to attend. I drew maps and scribbled quotes and studied French poetry. I watched Russian cinema and filmed the city and found myself learning more than ever - and loving it. I think that's what really matters. I started to succeed when I realized that I didn't have to play a game anymore. School is no longer a race to master the right tests and memorize the right facts. It's about choosing a path that makes you happy, classes and activities and people that remind you of how great it is to learn.

It's a lot like being a kid again. I remember coming home from kindergarten so thrilled to talk about matching and colors and addition, full of excitement for what I'd learned. Now, in college, we're finally given the chance to experience that wonder again. But that doesn't mean the stress is gone. Sometimes, the assignments just pile up, and learning becomes a chore again. Sometimes, I am absolutely overwhelmed, nights like that horrible Wednesday last year, and I wonder whether my days of academic success are behind me. But it would be ridiculous to compare apples to oranges. The banality of getting an A in a state-mandated English class because I could answer some multiple choice questions about Huck Finn could never compare to the joy of scoring a B+ on that lit paper I'm proud of, with the thesis about Russian gender roles I worked really hard on. Those of us in college have four years to soak up all the intelligence our universities have to offer, surrounded by brilliant people and amazing resources, finally free to pursue the sparks that light our fires. How lucky are we that we haven't even begun to peak.