In the summer between sophomore and junior year, I took a psychology class at NYU. I was told that it would be a class of other high school students so I shouldn’t worry – they were wrong. Since I chose a class that went until about 8:30 pm, I was one of the only high schoolers in a sea of college students trying to get some summer credits in. At first, I was enthusiastic and excited, I loved psychology and I just wanted to learn more and gain a better work ethic. But I soon realized that I wasn’t exactly welcome by the majority of my peers. Since I looked like a twelve year old – thanks hormone imbalance – no one took me seriously except the professor and the three kids who sat behind me who eventually became my friends. It got so bad that when I would answer a question correctly, other students would ask if I was actually right or not. I felt isolated to say the least. Another important part that I should mention is that all the other precollege students lived in dorms together, while since I already lived on the campus full time, I stayed at home. This made it really hard to meet people since the dorms would close each night and I couldn’t go to a lot of the events since they were for dorm-living students only. So I was already having a rough time, and to make it worse, the majority of my psychology class refused to take me seriously. 

During this time, I was going through a lot psychologically. I was still adjusting to a new high school and was dealing with my own depression, anxiety, and undiagnosed OCD. So learning about these disorders in class and being able to talk about our own experiences was sort of comforting. In a way it was intertwining psychology with the psychiatric illnesses that I had. By taking that class, and getting one of the top grades even though I was one of the youngest students, I learned a lot. While better studying habits, and how to ask for help are important, the most important thing that I learned was perseverance. Even though there were kids who didn’t like me (one even tried to close an elevator door on me after I made a statement that refuted hers) I still showed up everyday with a smile on my face and a passion for learning. Even though adapting to college classes was really hard at first, I kept going, and it really paid off. 

Sometimes while I’m reading an article for senior project, I feel as though I am right back in that NYU classroom. There are so many things that I don’t know and there are people (the authors and other scholars) who know more than me, and it’s daunting. But I keep going. I stay up late researching brain structures, I make sure that I’m the first one at my Oberlin lecture, and I make sure that I am being productive and not sweating over the details in every paper. Because I’ve learned that there will always be things that I don’t know or understand, but what separates me from others is that I’m okay with that.