Choices, romanticized

It would be so simple to flip a coin. To watch it flicker and spin in the air, to trace the grooves on its rim as they form delicate arcs--arcs that would eventually settle into certainty on the palm of my hand. I fantasize about the possibility of unloading all of my responsibility onto a little disk of metal, cool and heavy and definite. It would be so, so easy.

Many people have tried to comfort me. This choice, they say, means little in and of itself, because both Princeton and Penn are excellent.

But my choice is not between two institutes of learning. It is between two disparate ideologies; two separate ways of life. Princeton douses its campus with a perfume of intellectual loftiness; Penn effuses pragmatism and entrepreneurship. The people, the campus, the food, the atmosphere--everything is different. And the two halves of me--each attracted to a different school--are at once disparate and inseparable.

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

When I first heard about Penn's program in life sciences and management, I fell in love with the idea. Having an undergraduate business degree seemed empowering and exciting. I dreamed of all the things I could do coming out of that program: I could become an executive in a major pharmaceutical company; I could launch a start-up that would utilize biotechnology to solve health problems in developing countries; I could go into health care management and optimize hospitals to unimaginable new levels of efficiency. And the promises of wealth and influence were more than tempting.

But when I visited Penn, I realized that I might end up sacrificing everything else if I were to pursue this one course. To settle on one dream, on one path, would mean to extinguish all others. An artist, a scientist, a photojournalist, an author, a politician, a teacher--they would all be martyred in the birth of a businessman--or at the very least, an industry man. A corporate man.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same

Princeton's beauty took me by surprise. The soft stone, the carved wood, the quiet expanses of marble and grass felt timeless. On the walls of the dormitories, slight and gentle vines crept up and flowered delicate purple blossoms. While headed towards the institute for genome sciences, I came across what seemed to be three undulating bronze walls, parallel to each other and a few feet apart. I walked into the space between two of them and marveled at how the world disappeared and left me with only a wavy segment of sky. I spoke, and the metal around me reverberated with the tremors of my voice.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I'm not going to say that I have decided on Princeton, because that would be finality. Because uttering such a phrase would sever the last of my tenuous ties with the possibility called Wharton. Because the moment I take my first step, I know I will want to look back and ask myself, what if? Because I might berate myself for not taking a deep breath and just jumping in.

Because I still have five days left to change my mind.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

By choosing Princeton, I will have only made a choice to delay a more fundamental one. But I'm okay with that. I need those extra four years' worth of experience, insight, and confidence, because in the end, I want to devote myself to something that is neither easy nor risk-free. Because ultimately, I know that the goals most worth pursuing are the ones that I will most likely never reach.