I Don't Know

My friend showed me this video today, and I feel as though it thoroughly represents my current state of mind (and my state of mind for the past few years really):

For many, many years of my life, I have prided myself on knowing.  Knowing why, how, what exactly in our world works, and if I don't know, to go and find some answers about it.  Really, that's how this blog started: having too much stuff to say and not enough opportunities to say it.  Reading science articles as a middle schooler and being able to write and make some weird sense of it- or figuring out when to look up more to learn.  But now, I'm just uncomfortable and unconfident because I always have this pervasive sense of I don't know.

In a month, I'm going to be living and learning at MIT, one of the world's greatest institute for scientific and technological discoveries.  A community full of people who, well if they don't know, no one else does either.  I've heard oodles of advice, like "stay focused", "get involved", "but not too involved", "make the most of your time at MIT", "don't become too cocky", "you need confidence to get through MIT, because everyone else is going to be so amazing you'll feel quite insignificant otherwise".   I'll have more opportunities than I could possibly dream of, as well as being able to interact with some of the most brilliant people on this planet.  So it scares me that after four years of high school, I've come back to this blog and read through some of my old thoughts just to find that I not just don't know, but I really have Absolutely No Idea as to what I'm doing.  Let me just list some things in my big list of I don't knows:

I don't know what I want to do.  My goal in high school was to take all the AP sciences to find what I liked the most.  Verdict? I don't know whether I like chem, bio, or physics better.

I don't know anything about computer science except for the slow progress I'm making on codeacademy. Which may prove to be a problem most immediately when I participate in HackMIT, but more importantly in the long run as to what kind of things I want to do in my life.  (What are things? I don't really know either)

I don't know where I stand on so many issues.  I've actually stopped following Upworthy on Facebook because I realized its very strongly liberal articles are heavily warping my vision of the world, and I need to balance it out.  As the video relates, there's no one "true" opinion, and there are so many out there, that I simply find myself throwing up my hands going "I don't know".  Feminist? Supportive of education reform? Income inequality? I don't know! Or rather, I know the facts, I don't know my stance.

I don't know how to write a resume, or talk to professors, or do any of those things people say you need to apply to MISTI and internships and all of those.  Seriously, how do I do the adult thing? Or at least the college student thing?

I don't know what I even want to do as extracurriculars in college. Focus on research? Wind Ensemble? Leadership? Service? What can I even handle? Hopefully the pass/fail system at MIT will help me figure that out, but as of right now, looking through the extracurricular offerings is just.... confusing.

Quite frankly, I don't even know why I was admitted to MIT, because I'm completely lost as to what I want to do.  It might be in part because I assumed I would do premed, or something towards a biological research position, but realized that I haven't even touched the whole "engineering/computer science" sector of society and I want to jump in and see if I like it.

I realize that all of these things are normal, and just a part of growing up.  But I still can't shake the feeling of fear for the future, of all the unknowns.  I should be excited: at MIT, all my dreams can quite possibly come true: from lifelong friendships with people like me, to studying, researching, developing, and creating the things that I'm truly passionate about. If I work for it. If I seize the moment.  If I can figure out what "things" is, who those friendships will be with, and how I want to live my life.

I don't know if those if's will happen: as they say, be careful what you wish for. But at least, I can hope they will.  After all, I'm at least allowed to have an opinion, even if it might not be true.

And to the MIT admissions crew who may be looking at this blog in the next few days or weeks: just a shout out to say thank you for admitting me. I have no idea what you saw in me, but I will try my hardest to figure out what all these "I don't know"'s are, and make my MIT dreams come true.