As the eldest child of two immigrant parents and the second person in my entire extended family to graduate from an American university, I entered NYU with both uncertainty and anxiety.

My mom received her degree in her early 30s while working three minimum wage jobs, raising two kids and attempting to assimilate into a new country’s language and culture. Under those constraints, there was little room to frolic about and explore her passions. And despite her love for learning, that lifestyle would elude her until much later. 

In East Asia, education is transactional. I can personally vouch for South Korea, where the school-to-job pipeline moves like clockwork: A good grade gets you into a top university, which then gets you a well-paying job. I defaulted to following the numbers upon arriving at NYU, staying away from extracurriculars lest they interfere with my grades. But I quickly found that the material taught in classes, the information that appeared on exams — all of it could be learned online at a fraction of the cost. For me, getting the most out of my college experience was about exploring its people and taking risks in the academic space.

Although my parents could only offer limited guidance, their unconditional support allowed me to wander through university with curiosity and patience. I started to fall in love with the classroom, from discussing moral frameworks in political institutions to the inner workings of neural networks. There are people, I learned, who dedicate decades of their lives to studying a very niche topic. I constantly sought out the company of my professors — in their classrooms, offices and events. Through these connections, I was able to learn how one of my professors slipped out of a Colombian city via helicopter after miners had taken over the airport in a strike (shout out Professor Querubin).

I cannot say whether I would’ve come to the same conclusions at any other university, but at NYU, I learned not to see my college experience as something transactional — merely a name and a degree to slap onto my resume. I developed my sense of self in classrooms. Learning and living in the big city, with its diversity of thoughts and ideas, is priceless — well, NYU bills it at $90,000 annually. But as the city helped me grow in discomfort, academic spaces felt increasingly comfortable, becoming an extension of my community while simultaneously inviting dissenting opinions. And now that I’ve arrived at graduation, I am satisfied with my past three years as a student — despite the occasionally scathing op-eds I may have published in WSN.