I can’t believe that I just wrote those words. It doesn’t feel real that in a couple weeks I will be out in the world as a real adult. Not some “happy 18th birthday, here’s your adulting card” kind of adult. I will be a real, actual adult. And that’s scary. In a lot of ways, being at Carleton has felt like the shortest and — somehow — longest experience of my life. I somehow feel like I just got here and that my life has been consumed by Carleton. Despite this, all rivers must go to the sea, all suns must set and all things must end. So, to commemorate the end of my time, I’ve compiled a couple of things that I regret during my time at Carleton that function as pretty good advice — if you ask me.
The first thing is simple: don’t listen to seniors wax poetic about advice. I understand the irony of this statement, but hear me out. Seniors are just you in a couple of years. The difference between you and a senior is a few more hangovers and a couple more screwups. There is no intrinsic knowledge that comes with being a senior in the way that there is no intrinsic knowledge that comes with being a day, a week, a month or any other arbitrary length of time older than somebody else. Don’t listen to seniors because they’re seniors. That’s stupid. Listen to people that have had similar experiences to what you may experience in the future. Advice should be tailored to the person receiving it. It would be silly for me to tell a sophomore chemistry major about how to solve an organic chemistry problem, as I’ve never taken organic chemistry. This should seem obvious advice to just about everyone, but a lot of people fall for the fallacy of seniority — I certainly did. So does the writing of this article make me a hypocrite? Probably. But I’m ok with that because you don’t have to continue listening to me. You can choose to put down this paper or screen and stop. Oh. You’re still here? Awesome.
The second regret that I have is that I didn’t take full advantage of the liberal arts nature of Carleton. In my last two years especially, I’ve spent most of my time taking social science, econ/poli sci and Middle East studies classes. I regret that I only took one lab at Carleton. I regret that I didn’t take a class on art history or in Africana Studies. The point of a liberal arts school is that you take a bunch of different classes and inform your world view from interdisciplinary study. I think that I failed in that regard, but I think most Carleton students do. I don’t think that you should be able to get away with taking a full course load of classes from your major, even though I know plenty of people who do. If I were a college administrator for a day, I’d require that you can only have two classes per term from your major (unless you needed it to graduate or something along those lines). Regardless, this article is not a white paper for what the college should do. It’s focused on what I didn’t do and what you should do.
Beyond the academic regrets, I have a lot of extracurricular regrets, but that list is incredibly long and boring enough that it will never be published. Unfortunately, time at Carleton, as in the real world, is zero-sum. Time spent doing one thing is at the cost of something else, and that opportunity cost manifests differently for different people. And one thing that I’ve noticed is that Carleton students love complaining about problems, but not doing anything about them. For me, I complained about the loss of the Carleton quirk, but did nothing to keep it alive. I applied to Carleton under the pretense that it was a quirky liberal arts school in rural Minnesota. In a lot of ways, Carleton has held up to these expectations. In other ways, it fell short. The fact of the matter remains, the only way to keep traditions and cultures alive is by active participation. I chose to not participate in the quirk; I’m part of the reason that the quirk was killed. Similarly, if you have a problem at this school, it’s better to just do something to fix it rather than complain about it.
This is not an exhaustive list of my regrets and advice. There are a lot of things that I want to say, and I don’t want to make a litany of my problems and sit here like Kohelet imparting my infinite wisdom. It’s worth noting that for every regret that I have, I can’t count the number of things I’m proud of. I have a collection of some of the best friends that I could possibly ask for, I had some of the best advisors and professors at this school and every Carletonian meeting with the lovely people in this paper brightens my week. There are so many people on this campus that have made Carleton a great experience for me and to whom I am so grateful. Simultaneously, there are a lot of people on this campus that I wish I would have gotten to know better. In a weird way, this is a send-off letter and an invitation. As my time at Carleton wraps up, I want to thank all of the people that have impacted my life. There are so many of them, and you know who you are. But, as I still have a couple of weeks left, I want to extend an open invitation to anyone who wants to become better friends. Please reach out to me — I’ll definitely be reaching out to a bunch of you — and let’s get a meal sometime.
