Mistakes: They’re OK. No really. They are.

I’ve learned a lot throughout my first year here at Transy. But out of all the life lessons I’ve gathered, this is the most important: If you ever mess up, in anything ever, you will immediately fail college, your family will disown you, your friends will wrinkle their noses and perhaps make hissing noises whenever you pass them by, and ultimately you will be ostracized from civilization and spend the rest of your life huddled in a makeshift hut on a deserted island subsisting off tree bark and regret.

Or rather, not really. What I’ve actually learned this year is that, while it’s never any fun to make a mistake, when you do, it’s not the end of the world. In fact, failure is a crucial step to growing both personally and academically.

College brings with it a host of new opportunities to succeed, but also a host of new ways to mess up. Obviously, the classes are harder, but that’s not all- you’re also responsible for your own schedule, an entirely new social group, and more challenging extra-curricular activities. Throughout my first year experience, I’ve encountered failure in almost every aspect of my life at Transy: from forgetting to study and flunking a Latin quiz, to chocking up spectacularly before my first extemporaneous speech, to writing Rambler articles with glaring errors.

What was my first instinct after making these mistakes? The obvious: a three-step plan which included first sprinting away in mortification, then eating entire pizza whilst weeping, then giving up forever whichever activity it was that I had messed up.  Obviously, this approach was a little less than foolproof, and after consideration I decided to deal with my failures in a different way: by pressing onward and trying to learn from them.

Endings and Beginnings

I find it simply unfathomable that I am somehow done with my first year of college already. But strangely, this doesn’t feel as much like an ending to me as a beginning. Why? Because I’ve got a whole slew of new experiences and goals lined up for the months ahead.

This summer, I’m lucky to be working a paid position with the PROs (Pioneers Reaching Out) team! That means that I get to spend my summer months living on campus (free housing!), and working with prospective Transylvania students. Truth is, I’ve loved my experience blogging for you guys so much that I knew I wanted to continue to be involved with helping potential future Pioneers with their college selection process. On the PROs team, I will interact with students interested in Transylvania via a variety of media like emails, phone calls, and even social networking sites. I can’t wait to help out college-searching high school students, and I couldn’t think of a more rewarding summer job.

But working for PROs isn’t the only thing I’ve got planned for my summer. I’ve written in previous blogs about my creative writing interests, and about Lexington’s thriving creative writing community. Unfortunately, however, due to the super-crazy-busy newness of my first year of college, I haven’t dedicated quite as much time as I would have liked to nurturing my creative side- I plan to change that this summer by signing up for Lexington Poetry Month, a yearly event sponsored by Accents Publishing. For the entire month of June, I’ll write a poem every day, which will then be posted on the Accents Publishing website- and if I’m lucky, I could even get published in their yearly anthology. Though I do have some trepidations about my work being up on a website for all to see, these anxieties are nothing compared to the excitement I feel at the prospect of writing poetry again after a long hiatus.

Let’s Get Passionate

Sometimes, it can feel like quantity, not quality, of extra-curricular activity is what’s important when it comes to college and scholarship opportunities. There’s a lot of pressure on high school students to be a polo-playing broadway-musical-performing charity-organizing straight A student with perfect standardized test scores. It can be tempting to madly seize up any extra-curricular opportunities you can lay hand on during your senior year of high school, just for the sake of a lengthier application.

But, you’ll find, in the long run what matters, and what will really help you in the college application process, is not being involved in every club known to mankind, but finding the things you’re involved with which truly inspire and excite you.

Now, this isn’t to say it’s bad to be well-rounded, or involved in a variety of activities- I myself was throughout high-school, and even to this day, an ever-overscheduled individual. But my senior year of high school I began to take an introspective look at what activities really gave me the most fulfillment, and these things shaped both my college application process and my overall college experience.

Spaghetti Sauce and Your College Decision

 

Whilst doing my laundry last Thursday, I listened to a TED talk by author Malcolm Gladwell. The lecture he gave was about spaghetti sauce and, naturally, my thoughts went straight to the process of choosing a college.

Now, if you want to watch the video (which is very funny and enlightening) for yourself, it is available here:http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce But if not, I’ll give you a brief summary-  in this speech Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of Howard Moskovitz a scientist hired by the Campbell’s company to help them design the perfect formula for spaghetti sauce.

In his quest, Moskovitz started out by surveying people about what they wanted in a spaghetti sauce. Overwhelmingly, the responses were in favor of a smooth, creamy sauce, but when this formula was put to use in practice, the success rate of the sauce was still below that of competitors.

Frustrated, Mostovitz switched tactics, instead of asking subjects to describe the ideal spaghetti sauce,  he designed a wide variety of different sauces, which he then asked subjects to sample and choose their favorite. Using this method of study, a surprising conclusion was revealed- about a third of the people preferred creamy spaghetti sauce, about a third preferred spicy, and about a third preferred chunky. Campbell’s released a chunky variety of sauce later that year, in addition to their regular, and sales skyrocketed.

 So what does this tell us?

College in Style

I’m a big fan of clothes. I love finding unique clothing pieces and experimenting with unorthodox looks. Nothing brightens my day like having the perfect outfit for my mood, and I’m constantly on the lookout for interesting and unexpected new trends. One of the perks of going to school in Lexington is that this city has a terrific shopping scene, making it a great place to unleash one’s inner fashionista.

Of course, there’s the obvious- Lexington’s Fayette mall is the one of the biggest in the country. Home to just about any retail clothing chain you can imagine, including Anthropologie, Forever 21, and Charlotte Russe, the mall can cater to anyone’s style sensibilities without breaking the college budget. And with finals week, impending and the semester growing steadily more stressful, a retail therapy escape like that offered by Fayette Mall can really do the trick to relieve the pressures of projects and papers.

But while the mall is certainly fantastic, some of you may seek a more alternative and adventurous shopping experience. Lexington also has a multitude of less conspicuous shopping gems. This city has wide variety of out-of-the-way thrift and vintage shops just waiting to be discovered.

Springtime Resolutions

This year’s prolonged winter has caused me to spend  the last couple of months in a state of hibernation, creating within my dorm room a nest of blankets and pillows from which I emerged only when the basic demands of existence, like classes and food, called for it. When I did leave the cozy warmth of Forrer, I usually tried to minimize my time spent outside in the cold. And while there are a lot of great things about a Transy winter (see my earlier blog) it became all too easy for me to cling tightly to the glowing hearth of campus and neglect the outside world.

 However, as Transylvania’s campus is thawing out at long last, and I can finally venture outside for more than ten minutes without my nose getting numb, I have emerged from my winter den and into the wide, bright  world of springtime Lexington. I’m psyched for the new season, so I’ve made a list of spring-time resolutions:

1. Explore food

Lexington has an impressively thriving food culture. From Korean to Creole, every cuisine may be found somewhere in the community.  While in the winter-time it was oh-so tempting to stick to the Forrer cafeteria (conveniently and warmly located in my very own dorm building), now that it’s heating up I can’t wait to get out into the city and sample the culinary variety that surrounds me.