Life as a college student is like a patchwork quilt

My mom came to visit me last weekend, and there was a quilt convention at the hotel where she stayed. I usually don’t think too much about quilts, or about the varieties of esoteric gatherings that take place at convention centers across the country every weekend.

While we enjoyed playing “spot the quilters” at various locales around Bloomington (homemade looking vests were usually the giveaway), I was also thinking about something I needed to write and about the surprising way that quilting might just apply to my life after all.

For a scholarship recommendation, a teacher asked me to write a bit about any extraordinary extracurricular achievements or contributions to community service or academic research that have defined my (almost) three years at IU.

When she asked me to do this, rather than enjoy the honor of being recommended for this award, I sank into a regretful depression.

I walked around campus wondering why I haven’t single-handedly saved a species of monkeys, or identified a new strain of a disease, or published a book, or ...

I’ve done quite a few things in my time here, dedicating huge chunks of time to one student group or another before getting distracted by school work, friends or family.

But it’s honest, not modest, to admit that this assortment of leadership positions and honors appears unfocused and, while rewarding for me, not extraordinary in any one area.

My resume is a widely woven quilt of interests and passions.

The pressure to identify one area of focus and achieve within it reaches beyond scholarship competitions and affects the way many young people approach life and learning.

By the time you make it to IU, it’s time to choose a school and a major.

It’s fantastic that IU encourages freshmen to enter as exploratory students, but this weekend was also “Direct Admit Weekend,” a special opportunity for those students single-minded enough to apply directly to an IU school to be congratulated and wooed.

Society and IU reward ambition, direction, and focus — as well they should.

I admire students who enter college with a goal and pursue it with tunnel vision. But if no other institutions do, universities should wholeheartedly encourage diversity of interest and acknowledge the importance of breadth, not just depth, of achievement.

I have a vision of the college campus as the apex of exploration and self-discovery. I’m happy that in the last few years, my interests have veered into directions I never would have foreseen.

I’m happy I had the chance to try things out and decide they weren’t for me.

I regret that the broad range of activities that I’ve participated has in some ways kept me from devoting enough energy to achieve one “extraordinary” outcome.

But if my college experience looks more like a patchwork quilt than a single-color blanket, I’ll look back and remember a diversity of experience and the numerous times I had the chance to shape and re-shape my identity.

And really, when’s the last time you heard of a single-color blanket convention? It’s just not as exciting.
 

E-mail: swilensk@indiana.edu