I am currently 17 years old and sitting on the floor of my hostel room that probably hasn’t been mopped properly in days, eating Maggi at 2 a.m. that I made in my “hostel-friendly” kettle (like I have for the past two nights in a row), and wondering if “becoming someone” always feels like such a messy glitch in the simulation.
First semester was supposed to be my main character arc, where I get a magical miracle glow-up and suddenly am a genius when it comes to the computer science world. Instead, I’m just a girl who regularly Googles how to phrase a mail to sound “professional,” someone who always forgets her stuff somewhere, someone who has spent most of her time oscillating between “I am the future of this country” and “I think I need my mom right now.”
Trial and Error (Mostly Error).
The thing is, nobody tells you that “becoming someone” requires so much trial and error of different versions of yourself that just don’t fit. I came to college with an entire Pinterest board of “uni aesthetic” and a colour-coded Notion page with all my courses colour-coded (I haven’t even opened it since the first week of first sem). To paint a picture, my side of the room is a chaotic mess of different versions of myself. There’s a math textbook I borrowed from the library at the start of the sem that I didn’t even solve five pages of. There’s also my laptop (my attachment to this thing is unmatched), with the wallpaper that was stolen off of Pinterest with a “You got this!” affirmation that I definitely do not believe in most days. There are these kurtas I bought for some college events because I wanted to look “put together.” There’s also this hoodie from my school days that I still wear to class because somehow it still feels like a part of me.
My recently searched includes “How to make small talk,” “Is it normal to not know what you want to do with your life at 17” and “How often can you get food poisoning from mess food?”
Performing “Chill College Student” (Badly).
My Spotify is a scary mess, because what do you mean I have like 20 playlists? I got playlists for every single emotion I feel — “main character energy” right next to the “I miss 2022” playlist, along with a “MAKE IT BETTER” playlist (I love feminine rage), ending with a “study beats” that I’ve never actually studied to (I like to pretend I’m the kind of person that studies with lo-fi music).
It’s this weird, itchy limbo; I’m too old to be coddled but too young to know how to buy my own groceries without calling my mom. I’m not a girl, not yet a woman, mostly just an error in a hoodie I’ve owned since the ninth grade. This is what becoming someone looks like, apparently. A mix of who I’m trying to be, who I was and who I actually am when no one’s watching.
And don’t even get me started on the entire social aspect of it (I suck at social interactions and am an awkward mess most of the time); that’s another layer of mess I wasn’t prepared for. I’ve got friends from high school who somehow still see me as the person from 12th grade — the girl who cried before every exam and lived on coffee and a bad sleep schedule. And then I feel guilty because I miss them, but also I don’t miss who I was when I was with them. Is that awful? But then I’ve got my college friends who only know the current me (whoever that is). The me who pretends she likes hanging out in large groups but crashes in social energy in like two hours and wants to crawl into her bed and have some alone time. I spend half my time in the room practicing my “I’m a chill, interesting college student” face, while the other half is spent internally screaming because I don’t know how to end a conversation without it being awkward.
Some days, I’ll be sitting in a lecture on data structures, nodding like I understand the “logic” of the world, while my internal monologue is just wondering if I should start wearing rings to look more “sophisticated” or if that’s trying too hard. My code has bugs (IT JUST WON’T RUN), my skincare routine is nonexistent and my life path is a questionable mess.
Still in the messy in-between.
Here’s the real kicker: Everyone around me seems to have some sort of manual I did not get. Because WDYM you have an internship already and we’re in the second semester? There are people with fully functioning and thriving GitHubs and I still need to discover how to use that site without looking dumb. My GitHub is a graveyard of half-finished projects and one “Hello World” program from orientation week that I’m too embarrassed to delete. My LinkedIn says I’m “passionate about technology and innovation” and I crack up every time I see it because… yeah, sure girl! I’ll see people posting about hackathons and networking events and “grateful for this opportunity” — while I’m sitting on my bed after a doomscrolling and bed-rotting day, eating Kurkure.
But I’m starting to realise that there is no “after” picture. No version of me is perfectly finished, polished and LinkedIn-ready. There’s only me RN.
Still 17, still eating Maggi two nights in a row after skipping dinner at the mess because I did not like the menu. Still oscillating between “I’m gonna change the world” and “I can’t even fix my sleep schedule.” Still wearing the ninth-grade hoodie, because it still feels like me from before. Maybe this sem I’ll have it all figured out (I won’t). Maybe by the time I turn 18, I’ll be a “new-me” (I’m laughing just reading it). For now, I’m just a girl with like a gazillion Spotify playlists with aesthetic covers and questionable names, a colour-coded Notion page I still won’t open and a Pinterest board of a life I’m not at all living. And you know what? That’s completely fine. Or maybe it’s not. I’ll figure it out eventually. That’s enough of a glow-up for me.
For more such articles that feel like a warm hug amidst an existential crisis, visit Her Campus at MUJ. And for a tour in my corner, visit Anushka Singh at HCMUJ.