I was talking to a friend of mine who is tackling her first college visits over this spring break–a junior–and she e-mailed me an interesting question, here reproduced.

oh yeah, and i’m checking out columbia on wednesday. the whole process had made me more nervous about figuring out what i want to do with my life than worried about getting into college. >.< did it have that effect on you?

My reply? Here we are, advice that I think many I see panicking could take to heart before fretting too much about their future lives as brainwashed investment bankers.

If you get yourself too concerned with long term ‘tracking’ type planning then you might work yourself up into a terrible mess. For me, I looked at it a certain way–if I had a balanced list, it would be very unlikely that I wouldn’t go -somewhere- and wherever I went I knew I could do my best to use the resources there to explore what I might want to do later. That’s the best way to look at things so as to not go crazy, I think. I’m not going to lie and say that I was near 100% successful with that strategy but it was something of a guiding principle… if you throw in a healthy dose of delusion well then you’re set. Garnish with insecurities and malcontent and serve piping hot.

Can you identify why it has made you nervous? The college application process, and college search, can be quite eye-opening when you see how open-ended things can be. This is America, after all, not the U.K. or something. Unless say you’re applying to some esoteric school for one specific program (which I don’t recall you as ever having mentioned being your intent, given the sizes you were talking about) you’ll find that a wide range of strong offerings will keep your possibilities very open indeed. So be happy about that, it’s a land of possibility even if it is also a land of unknowns and unforeseen challenges. C’est la vie.

Sure, I know it seems like this is all easy for me to say since I’m a senior with no more high school classes to look forward to, but I think it’s still worth thinking about. I was talking to my friend Greta the other day and was amazed when I remembered that it was Pi Day a year ago– 3/14/06–that we both went on our first college visit, to MIT. Remember?