Poor Choices

I knew I was going to get into MIT, so I only applied to UT and UTA otherwise.

I never applied for financial aid from UT, because at the time of the deadline, I was convinced I would be going to MIT.

When I was rejected from MIT, I chose to skip the $8,000/year scholarship at UTA and give UT a shot.

Once I got to UT, I didn't make meeting new people a priority.

After a few weeks at UT, I began to really dislike my classes, so I stopped going to them.


Maybe these were mistakes and maybe they weren't. That depends on how you define mistake. Perhaps the biggest mistake happened much earlier and snowballed to prove my lackluster candidacy for enrollment at MIT. Or perhaps going to MIT would have been a bigger mistake than all of them. Going to UT might have been a mistake, but I have certainly gained worthwhile experience here. Does the good outweigh the bad? How can one compare the two? Is it worthwhile to evaluate my previous mistakes in hopes that I will make fewer in the future? I think so. So perhaps there were multiple courses of action that would have been greatly beneficial. Obviously there are courses of action that are greatly harmful. The question becomes: how can I select the course of action that will be most beneficial? But it is impossible to compare two courses of action that bear such significantly different consequences.

Great men have come from lesser universities. Even more great men have come from great universities. Some great men have never been to a university. A man's greatness is not defined by who his parents are, what degree he holds, the contents of his wallet, or the means by which he lives. A great man is defined by his actions. Everything else is trivial.


My only desire is to be great.