How Creative Thought Matters changed me

I spent most afternoons of my junior year of high school flipping through The Fiske 大学指南. The 500-page book weighed me down both physically and mentally as I scanned each college listing, overwhelmed by the endless menu of choices.  

Most schools felt off — excessive in one aspect or lacking in another. 不跳了 在我面前. My highlighter and Post-it Notes remained untouched.  

Then I started to fret. 我是不是太努力了? Am I overthinking this? 我是否会 找一个合适的? I kept turning the pages, hoping something I couldn’t even define or articulate 就会显露出来.    

And sure enough, just like that, Skidmore appeared. (Though really, I was flipping alphabetically and I had finally reached the S’s.) There it was, hundreds of schools and pages into this giant book, a phrase I had never heard before: “Creative Thought Matters.”  

Instantly, intuitively and much to my surprise, I knew I liked this. 这就是 I wanted from a school. But it came to life in an even more meaningful way as the pressure of my college search built.  

Creative Thought Matters is aspirational. 这是一个承诺. And it invited me to imagine 多给我自己.   

I began to daydream about Skidmore students who lived and breathed this phrase, strolling blissfully through a picturesque campus I hadn’t actually seen but I knew must be beautiful, inspired by professors I hadn’t actually met but I knew must be amazing. (After all, the college guides told me so.)  

I began to wonder — did Skidmore students use their minds differently? 他们在跟着我吗? 不同的激情? Were they more free in their curiosities and expressions of themselves? 

Then I realized something — Creative Thought Matters had changed the way I thought 火博体育大学. 

Once I read it, I couldn’t go back. College was no longer a predetermined path or something to carefully map. Rather, it was open, malleable and filled with the freedom to figure things out and change my mind.  

I could go to a place where Creative Thought Matters without knowing exactly what I wanted to study and why. All I needed to understand was that there is no one way and no right way to use my mind. And in this case, my mind was made up. 我是 在火博体育.  

Sure enough, once I arrived I found multiple exciting, fascinating and interconnecting 学科. My mind has stretched in ways that have left me puzzled, yet yearning 更多的. Four years here and Creative Thought Matters has manifested in me, given me permission to think bigger, try, fail, experiment and see things in new ways.  

And as I prepare to move to the next phase of my life, I know that no matter what I do and where I go, I’m well equipped with the very phrase that intrigued me all 那些年以前.