As the end of April comes to a close, over a year has already passed since NYU Shanghai held its first round of candidate and admitted students weekends (CW/ASW) for its inaugural class, and yet it feels like it’s been forever since then. Last spring, the school hosted several weekend events for Chinese candidates and two weekend trips, one in Shanghai and one in New York, for the international students that were accepted. This year’s events have already passed, and despite the fact that our own trips weren’t that long ago, I still feel a sense of nostalgia thinking back on it. My experience at the ASW in New York was undoubtedly life changing for me, as it was for many others, and I’ll always be happy to say that one of the craziest things I’ve ever done is commit to a university after only stumbling upon its website four months before. I might have even been a little bit insane when making the decision because I ended up choosing the one school I applied to that didn’t have the program I had been intending to major in for the last three years. (If you’re curious, it was architecture.) Now full disclosure, (and I know many students here can sympathize with me on this,) NYU Shanghai was an application I completed on a whim. Granted, it was a more “focused” whim because I applied solely to NYU Shanghai and not NYU New York. Nevertheless, I thought of it as an (exciting yet extremely far fetched) option, that would make me feel less restrained to the straight path I set out for myself years ago. When April came around and I received my acceptance letter, I never thought the weekend trips offered would change my life the way it did. Before attending the ASW in New York, I knew NYU Shanghai must have been a new university, but I didn’t realize how new it was until I was informed a week or so later. It sounds silly, I know, but I really had no idea how significant this group of students was when I was with them. It did occur to me, though, that every single person there was extremely qualified, diverse, and interesting. As hard as it is for me to break out of my shell, I was able to talk to many people with relative ease and eagerness by the end of the weekend. I felt like the positive qualities of everyone around me somehow reflected off of me. Raised in a town where the environment is the complete opposite, I thought that a place where I could continually grow in this subtle way would be the most beneficial to me. By spending time with these students all weekend, I realized that college is as much about personal growth as it is about learning. In the long run, I figured that personal growth is the most important thing to focus on. I wasted so many hours in high school worrying about academics that I never had time to think about myself. Although I was set on studying a certain major beforehand, there was a sliver of a doubt that it wasn’t my true passion. Gambling with my happiness for the next four years wasn’t something I wanted to try, which is funny because coming to NYU Shanghai was probably an even bigger gamble, but I knew that taking that leap of faith with so many brilliant students by my side would be enough of a thrilling life experience to be grateful. Growing up, I constantly changed what I wanted “to be” in the future, but as I reflect back on it, one notion never left me and sticks with me to this day. I wanted to be different from all the others. I didn’t want to be static; I wanted to be constantly changing and helping the world with my best efforts. As I sat at a dinner table Saturday night, listening to NYU President John Sexton speak to us directly about this university, his words resonated with me because of this reason. In a matter of minutes, he was able to dig up the real purpose inside of me, and that was to “play another octave of the piano.” If I’m being completely honest, I also wanted to challenge one thing that he said over and over again, and that was, “NYU Shanghai is not for everyone.” This may have been terrible reasoning on my part, but I did not want to be everyone. That statement really struck a cord in me, and subconsciously, it still serves as motivation for me to keep working to the best of my ability, no matter how hectic or packed my schedule gets. I wouldn’t have ever enrolled in this school had I not heard his words. It’s easy to believe that it’s not smart to completely trust everything John Sexton tells you, but my faith in this school really stemmed from the other students I met over course of those three days. I remember spending one night in a hotel room with a bunch of other girls, and it was comforting to speak and hear about the anxieties and expectations everyone shared regarding the school. I’m sure most people were at least a little scared of the idea when they committed, but I never lost confidence in the fact that we were all capable of building this new school and succeeding together. As a Chinese American who only knew how to say ‘good morning’ in Cantonese and had never traveled abroad before the age of 17, moving across the world to a startup university in Shanghai was absolutely terrifying. But sometime during the weekend, I began to feel exhilarated by the idea that I might actually get a step closer to experiencing the world like I’ve always dreamed. It was a desire for uncertainty on a greater scale, uncertainty that wasn’t the same as deciding what I wanted to major in. When I accepted NYU Shanghai’s offer, I not only committed to an education, I also committed to my future peers, my professors, our hardworking administration, and the promise to help make this work. Even though many of us experienced a very rough first semester, I never forget the reasoning behind why I dedicated myself to this new and wonderful endeavor. For whatever combination of reasons, we all signed up for the frustrating problems, the driving achievements, the laughter, and the tears. When we graduate in 2017, I’m positive that these experiences will have shaped all of us into different individuals compared to what we were at the beginning of our journey at NYU Shanghai. In the months before coming to Shanghai in August, I still had this small inkling of fear in the back of my head that I would later regret choosing this new university and deviating from my initial college plans when reality smacked me in the face. However, after I came here, I began making all kinds of new, crazy, and sometimes embarrassing memories with the most amazing people, and that fear faded away completely. My whole life, I had constantly been looking and waiting for some ultimatum to come along and change my life forever. In my head, it was a question of, “Do I take the safer path or do I take the path less traveled?” It wasn’t until that weekend when my first real window of opportunity showed itself to me. All I had to do was reach out and grab it. And so I did. Disclaimer: I want to acknowledge the fact that we all hold vastly different experiences, memories, and thoughts from our days as prospective students. This is no more than a personal reflection, but I hope many of my classmates can see some of their own feelings in my account and reflect on their own story if they haven’t already. This article was written by Cynthia Sun. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Cynthia Sun