I’m not proud to admit it, but during my first month at Cal Poly, I developed a superiority complex to cope with the fact that I took a gap year.
Throughout my childhood, I prided myself on being ahead of the curve (a trait I imagine is common in Cal Poly students). I learned to talk when I was 9 months old and taught myself to read when I was 4. I got into my school’s honors program in 2nd grade and always got a kick out of doing the same work as my older friends. In high school, I was in as many AP classes as I could stand and got my college applications submitted weeks before the deadlines. I was always (immodestly) ahead.
But as I write this, I’m behind. I’m in classrooms with hundreds of students who just graduated high school, most of whom have the same amount of academic drive as I do, if not more. And I can’t shake the feeling that I need to be doing more;I need to be taking more units, taking classes over the summer, and taking classes online. I need to graduate early so I don’t have to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of not being ahead.
Moreover, when degree planning didn’t offer immediate relief, I wrote a novella-length text to my sister during my first week in the dorms:
“I feel ungrateful but the difference between 18 and 19 is insane. Nothing about the party scene is fun to me. Disrespectful? Ill-informed? Destructive? Yes. But certainly not fun. What is so amazing about losing your inhibitions? Aren’t inhibitions there to prevent you from hurting yourself and the people around you? People are always breaking stuff and the dorm’s disgusting. I cleaned our communal bathroom the other day because it was so gross. I just feel like I’m too old for this sh*t”
How was I coping with my gap year? To protect myself from feeling behind, I dismissed my peers as immature. If I could claim to be so far ahead in maturity, it wouldn’t matter that I was a year behind academically. If I could position myself so far above them, I would never have to compete with them.
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How am I coping now? As Maya Angelou puts it, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.”Â
To play devil’s advocate against myself, why can’t an 18-year-old act 18 years old? And why do I have to define my identity by who I’m more mature than? Why do I have to protect my ego by putting someone else down?
I can’t change the year I spent working long Starbucks shifts, trudging through a disastrous breakup, contracting tonsillitis, and drifting further away from all the friends who made it to college. I can’t change how defensive I get when I hear about a 1600 SAT score from a 2024 graduate. But when I think about how I want to remember this time I spend in college, none of that matters. Am I here to adopt a Fantastic Mr. Fox-esque prerequisite to feeling good about myself? To dazzle the masses with my success? To look down on my younger peers for growing up at their own pace? Certainly not. I’m here to be happy, to make friends, and to lead a peaceful life. So why not take my time?