Say yes.
That was one of the most influential, yet confusing, pieces of advice that I received before arriving on Grounds my first year. A former teacher, who gave me the suggestion, advised me to always say yes whenever someone asked me to do something in college. She told me a fascinating story about how she once ended up at dinner with the Vice President Quayle simply because she accepted an invitation to coffee with someone in her dorm. Over coffee, they found out that they were both interested in studying politics and winding up in DC post-graduation. I’m not sure how that correlated to her eating a fancy dinner in DC with the Vice President and his advisors, but it was enough for me to remember her advice at least until today.
While I will admit that my “saying yes” to new, sometimes scary, opportunities has never landed me at an iHop table next to Joe Biden, it has provided me with unique opportunities to connect with people who, while I may have run into somewhere during my college years, I would never have had the opportunity to really get to know.(GIF courtesy of giphy.com)Â
I’ve learned throughout my time in college that this is a great philosophy to have. With this advice, I have joined clubs and committees that have shaped my college experience in ways that I could’ve never imagined, and I have gone to dinner with professors simply because they offered the invitation to a large class. (You’d be surprised to see how few students in a 300-person lecture don’t take their teacher up on a free taco dinner). These have been experiences that are extremely unique and make a large school like UVA feel more like home.
I say all of these good things knowing that recently, I have found out that you can’t say yes to everything. Your parents probably told you that you could do anything you wanted when you grow up, but, what I am now realizing, is that they never told me (and they probably didn’t tell you) that I could do everything that I wanted when I was grown. And, to be fair, I never faced much of a time or energy constraint when I was younger and wanted to go to the movies Friday night and my lacrosse game Saturday. Now that I’m in college, I’ve found myself always straddling the line between fully-booked and overbooked. And, sometimes when I’m fully-booked, I am booked with activities that I am merely going to because I feel like I should say “yes” to them.
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I’m not referring to the one hour lecture you attend because your friend is presenting, or that one club sports game you go to one Sunday instead of sleeping in. I’m referring to those times that you find yourself going to an interest meeting to appease a professor or going out on a night when you plan to stay in, because you feel like you have to. I don’t think I’m the only one who has stayed out too late or overbooked herself to check off all of the boxes that seem to precede any friendship.
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That being said, I’ve come to wonder what exactly my former teacher meant when she encouraged me to always say yes, and I’ve begun to think of it this way: say yes to those things that you want to do. Say yes to those things that will help you challenge yourself, and don’t simply use your “yeses” to show a friend that you have all the time in the world. Friends understand that you’re busy, and that you can’t always say yes. And, to be honest, your friends are going to like you a lot more if you aren’t consistently changing your plans on them because you’re too overbooked. You’ll be happier having time to yourself, and your friends will be happier that you have time for them.
My advice to prospective college students? Say yes, within reason.
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