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Supplemental essays: subject to change

By Sawyer Frisbie ’19

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For many people, the college application process begins and ends at the tail end of high school. You spend months and months touring, interviewing, applying and then you just press the submit button and wait. After my time in the trenches of the Common App, I finally got to the “I’m done” phase. Acceptance letter in hand, I was packing my bags to a semester in London, ready to fly far, far away from college essays. Then I made a mistake. I let my mom read my Common App essay. She loved it. Turns out not only do I like to write, but I also happen to be pretty decent at it sometimes. This was a massive mistake because a couple of years ago my mom finally started the business that she had been crafting in her mind for years: Academic Insight, individualized educational consulting or, more simply, independent college counseling. After reading my essay she started using her dark magic to get me involved in her work. “Can you just read this sentence?” “How does this paragraph sound?” The next thing I knew, I was getting my first paycheck as an editor for Academic Insight. It all escalated so quickly. 

My favorite part of my job is when a student shows me their supplements for their first-choice college. The supplement questions are usually pretty generic, most likely about why the student feels this school would best fit them, but the responses are passionate and vary greatly. Now almost two years out from my personal college application process, I became curious about what I had said in my supplement to Hamilton, my top choice school, and whether or not I still felt the same way about the school after actually being here. The supplement asked why we thought we would thrive at Hamilton, and here’s what 17-year-old me wrote: 

“In any high school, it is hard to find time to do everything and try anything you want. Especially in boarding school with sports requirements, study halls, and curfews it feels impossible to do it all. Then, I walked onto Hamilton’s campus. Suddenly anything felt possible. It was as if my bubble popped and all of a sudden I could see no limits on what I could do. 

As my tour guide walked us from building to building, I felt myself becoming inspired. As we walked through the student centers, I felt the desire to connect. In the new art building, I felt inspired to create. In the outdoors room, talking to Andrew, I felt excited to explore. A friend of mine owns a clothing company that promotes a lifestyle that I’ve always craved, a life of someone who “inspires the unrelenting pursuit of dreams, the confidence to take the road less traveled, and the desire to share the wonders of life with others.” When I walked onto the Hamilton campus, suddenly this philosophy, previously just a quote, came to life. The students at Hamilton are pursuing their dreams, forging new paths for themselves, and are constantly asking “why not?” instead of “why?” I am ready to start living my life inspired and at Hamilton I would be surrounded by people doing just that, living inspired.” 

I was shocked. I opened this thinking that I would laugh at misconceptions I had about the school before I arrived, but I was wrong. In reality, I hit the nail on the head. Hamilton really is an environment filled with dreams and inspiration, but am I living my life inspired? Has sophomore me let down 17-year-old me? In reality, Hamilton has just been one long chain of mini life crises for me. I came to Hamilton as a super outdoorsy varsity athlete, but a series of injuries kept me out of sports and away from many outdoor activities, making my previous identity obsolete. I kept my head above water freshman year and settled into college life, but sophomore year rolled around and all of a sudden I felt that I had no real identity. How am I supposed to live inspired or follow my dreams if I don’t even know what inspires me and what my dreams are? 

After these thoughts kept me up for a couple of nights, I realized something that I wish someone had told me much earlier. I was wrong to assume that I was the only one struggling, the only one lost, the only one unsure of what they want to do in life. 

The truth is that no one has any idea what they’re doing. Living inspired and following dreams at Hamilton means faking it until you make it, and pretending like you have your sh*t together. Even if 17-year-old me didn’t realize it, that’s exactly why I came here. I was lost, and I wanted to be lost with other people. I wanted to find my passion alongside people determined to find theirs and have fun doing it. We’ll probably all graduate just as lost as we started, but it’s those little life crises we have along the way that truly shape us, force us out of our comfort zone and in the end make us who we are. 

If I could go back and talk to my 17-year-old self, I’d tell her this: we thrive because we are not afraid of being lost, we are not afraid of being confused, we are not afraid to lean into discomfort. Don’t be afraid.

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