Western University is populated with brilliant and ambitious students. They embody purple pride and represent our academic tenets in many ways. Every year, the Faculty of Science receives a fresh, new wave of first-year students and concurrently offers its farewell to graduates who are about to take on the ultimate challenge of life. Most students both arrive and depart with a big picture in mind. We are told that the inevitable next step from high school is to attend a university. And the inevitable next step after that is to become a medical doctor, professor, researcher, software engineer, data analyst, you name it.

The dream of an illustrious career lingers endlessly in the back of our minds. However, the biggest entity in between the goal and ourselves seems to be a four-year bachelor’s degree. This means more courses, more competition, more fees, and more years under formal education.

Regardless of which year you are in, you will be faced with new challenges everyday. As soon as a midterm is finished and everyone lets out a sigh of relief, the final exam season is here before you even know it. Yet, you still want to achieve your dreams despite all the challenges. You are willing to work hard, and your eyes are fixated on the future, or more specifically, a career. There is an end in sight, but the fact that you will have eighty more grueling exams to go before graduation alone can be the most daunting revelation of this road through higher education.

Being ambitious is an important trait. However, as tantalizing as the future can be, the steps in between you and your dream career deserve the most attention. Higher education is a marathon. While you may groan about the frightful one-hundred kilometer running distance between point A to B, the finish line becomes more feasible as you take one kilometer at a time. Do it one step at a time if you have to. Then in no time, one-hundred kilometers becomes eighty kilometers; eighty becomes forty; and forty soon becomes the greatest accomplishment in your life. Similarly, after a poor grade on a midterm grade, your very next focus is to do better on the next exam. If you trip and fall, don’t let it affect your goal to finish the race. The best solution is to lift yourself back up and run faster.

But also remember to stop and smell the roses. No matter how sure you can be about yourself, higher education is a safe place for further self-discovery and molding yourself into a better or different person. Obviously, this is where extracurricular activities swoop in and some may perceive them as just another hurdle or “requirement” for their careers. Yes, they are almost required in order to be a competitive prospect in eyes of the workforce, but undertaking activities in the first place should be based on your curiosity. Extracurriculars such as clubs, research, student council, and volunteering should teach rather than decorate you. In other words, it takes courage to admit that certain activities seemingly matching to graduate schools’ image of the ideal candidate may not be suitable for you as a person. It takes bravery to question your big picture and make changes of varying grandeur accordingly. It takes spirit to find your identity here at Western.

Higher education isn’t meant to simply complicate your path. We are extremely privileged to have huge parts of our tuitions paid for by our parents or the government and receive quality education from quality professors. As such, it would be disappointing to reduce universities to mere obstacles. Fortunately, higher education is quite flexible in terms of the courses that you can take and the types of degrees that you want. Rigid formulas are things of the past. The days of nurturing diversity are finally here and the person in control of your future is you, but Western University can help you if its resources are used effectively. This is the sensitive period for you to find an identity that will last a lifetime and before you know it, your big picture will become reality. Here’s to another successful year!