Serendipity

I’m sitting behind the information desk at the Wren Building, one of the last students on campus as I prepare to head home tomorrow for Spring Break. Three prospective students were here a few minutes ago, and they asked me a question I hadn’t heard in a while—what made me choose William & Mary?

It’s something that has been on my mind often as I approach the end of my third year of college. For me, it was a gut feeling, mostly—one that is difficult to quantify. On tours, I make up an answer—I say it was the campus, the people, the small size, and all of these things are not wrong. But how to I quantify to a group of strangers that it was a combination of all these factors and something more, a sense that I belonged here, that I had been here before? In terms of higher education, William & Mary was The One, there was no other—I had other options, sure, but I felt like I was supposed to be here, it was serendipitous, and I was not wrong. Here, I have been challenged in ways I could not have anticipated, I have met inspiring and brilliant people I feel lucky to call my friends, I have walked in the same footprints as the greats who have come before me—Thomas Jefferson, Glen Close, Robert Gates. I am a small part of a vast legacy.

It was a feeling for me, subjective, ephemeral, but real all the same. It is the same look I see in the eyes of brides as they prepare to walk down the aisle of the Wren Chapel, the same happiness that radiates from friends who have just accepted offers from their dream jobs. It’s a certainty, a readiness for the next chapter.

I’m looking for the same feeling now as I prepare my resume for summer job searches, and later, my career search. I only wish that making these decisions was as easy as choosing William & Mary—how will I know what I’m supposed to do with my life? How will I know with whom, and where, I’m supposed to spend it? It’s a sobering realization—that I will leave, and others will take my place here, as I will find my own in the world beyond Williamsburg.

I think that I’ll know what I’m supposed to do, some day, but I remind myself that I still have some time. I have another year here, with the friends and the people I love best, and then perhaps I’ll spend a gap year working on a llama farm (or something.) I have time, and when I know where I’m heading after this, I’ll just know, the same way I knew I was meant to be here.