What Life Has Taught Me So Far · 05
On the gap between what's listed and what's real
I’m proud of things like becoming an AP Scholar with Distinction, being inducted into National Honor Society, participating in research programs, publishing research, writing books, and doing leadership programs.
But I’m also starting to realize something kind of weird: some of the moments that have taught me the most would probably only take up one line on a résumé.
A résumé can say I volunteered at a homeless shelter. It can’t really explain what it felt like to interact with the people there.
It can say I participated in a dialogue program. It doesn’t show the moment when someone said something that made me rethink my own opinion.
It can say I wrote a novel. It doesn’t show all the times I stared at a blank page wondering what I was supposed to write next.
And it can list an AI research project with an accuracy percentage, but it can’t show all the mistakes and confusion that happened before I ever got that number.
I obviously still care about grades, college, awards, and accomplishing things. I’m a teenager — I’d be lying if I said those things don’t matter to me. But I’m beginning to understand that they aren’t the whole story.
What life has taught me so far: I want to accomplish big things, but I don’t want my life to become just a list of accomplishments. I want the things I do to actually mean something to me — and hopefully to somebody else too.