It’s my first day of college. I wait outside the steel door labeled with a number, tapping my foot impatiently as Berkeley time comes around. In my head though, I’m reviewing the highly anticipated set of questions every college newcomer has the honor to receive:
What’s your name?
Where are you from?
What’s your major?
Now, don’t get me wrong — those questions aren’t inherently bad. Most of the time, everyone has a different name, a different hometown, a different major. But when it comes to answering those questions every single time you have a conversation with a new person, it can get a bit tiring.
Since I’ve gotten to introduce myself to a mass of people every day since college started, I always thought that there had to be better questions to describe students’ identities, like the thought-provoking ones from college applications. For instance, something about their leadership qualities from high school, or what their goals were growing up.
It feels like those questions better reveal the traits that actually matter most about a person. Those are the traits that make a person more memorable, more impressive, compared to the average student, especially in a day and age where people are meant to stand out to be one step up the ladder above everyone else. It’d make more sense to ask the typical thought-provoking questions expected in job interviews rather than the simple, surface-level questions in everyday life.
“Those are the traits that make a person more memorable, more impressive, compared to the average student, especially in a day and age where people are meant to stand out to be one step up the ladder above everyone else.”
Hannah Yi
But maybe those questions feel repetitive, not because of their generic nature, but more because of the whirlwind of thoughts they bring up to the surface. It’s difficult to answer those simple inquiries sometimes, like where I’m from, as a third culture kid, or what I’m looking to do with my major when I still have no idea what path I want to take.
Meanwhile, on campus, everyone else seems to have their life figured out as a start-up CEO or a finance intern, and I can almost see their LinkedIn headlines flashing above their heads. It’s a jarring contrast to how I feel while I’m still learning about the small things — what I’m passionate about, what I like to do, what kind of person I want to be.
These simple questions let me know that I don’t need to know everything straight away. Rather than mulling over finding the perfect introduction for myself that sums up everything about my life and career in one neat box, I see it as something continuous and always changing, with my answers building up over time. These introductions could even be the beginning of a question of its own, like about where I feel at home or what topics I’m interested in, taking away the pressure of defining myself.
When I step through the door to my class, listening again and again to the same three questions I dread answering, I might not be able to answer them all in full confidence, nor in an impressive way. Still, I know that I’ll be able to build up my identity through my introductions in time, after the questions end.