Too long. I admit that I have spent a ridiculous amount of my time at Brandeis University writing long baseball articles that no one understands. But I do not think that took anything away from my experience.
When I was looking at schools to visit in Massachusetts, my mom suggested that I come visit Brandeis. At the time, I had never heard of it before and did not really want to visit any more schools, but my mom convinced me otherwise. I am sure no one is surprised, but my mom was right. I visited the school and loved it. At the time, I don’t think I was really paying attention to the giant hill, which might have been an oversight. In the end, I decided to come to Brandeis and overall it has been a bag of mixed experiences.
My first thought at Brandeis was that I did not know what I wanted to do. I of course was told that I had time to figure that out. But I didn’t really have that much time. I ultimately made the decision to be a pre-medical student, but I quickly felt like I was behind. I missed the freshman year struggles of general chemistry and biology. To this day, I am not entirely sure that was a bad thing, but I missed it nonetheless. The decision to be a pre-med student gave me a path. I knew what classes I needed to take and what I should be doing during my time at Brandeis. This felt comforting and trapping at the same time. I remember in my freshman year when volunteering, an upperclassmen told me that every pre-med student feels the same way. One day you are a pre-med student and the next you aren’t. That definitely epitomizes my academic time at Brandeis. Some days I would love the classes I am taking, while others it seemed frustrating to keep up and follow. COVID-19 might have had something to do with that, but in the end I realized sometimes professors make no sense and I guess that is something you just have to live with.
Let’s talk about The Brandeis Hoot for a second. I joined in the second semester of my freshman year because I feel like I needed to get out of my comfort zone. Writing for the longest time was my worst quality. In eighth grade, my English teacher told me that I was the worst writer she had ever taught. That was 11 years ago but that moment remains burned in the back of my mind. The first article I wrote for The Hoot was about swimming. It felt great to get my first article published, but at the same time I was genuinely confused because I knew nothing about swimming. I wanted to keep writing, but I was worried that I did not know enough about certain sports that it would be difficult for me to keep up. That worry was quickly squashed as The Hoot community made sure that I was comfortable with what I was writing. It has been three years and I still do not understand volleyball, swimming, tennis and fencing. Yet, my comfort level has changed and I have now written eight swimming and diving, seven fencing, six volleyball and four tennis articles with this paper. Shout out to Sasha Skarboviychuk ’22 and Stewart Huang ’22 for making writing and layout easier.
As my time at Brandeis comes to close, I sometimes think about how time has gone by. My dad always asks me how fast my time at school went for me? I always answer by saying everything went by slow and fast at the same time. In the moment, things went by slowly. But when I look at things as a whole, I realize how quickly time has passed. This to me is a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because I think I am ready for a new challenge. You might be wondering if I am terrified of medical school, I would have to say no. If I have learned anything from Brandeis, it’s that there is no reason to ruminate on your failures. Take that experience and run forward. Am I really ready for medical school? I am not sure, but it’s a new challenge and I am always ready for a new challenge. However, it’s a bad thing because I’m not ready to let go of all the great experiences and people from Brandeis. In The Hoot in particular, I have had some great experiences. Whether it was rushing to beat Stewart to the better computer to watching Cooper Gottfried ’25 photoshop Hoot editors on to a variety of foods and people with Snapchat, I will continue to laugh and never forget. To my best friend, I love you and hope that you are ready to be an adult. I want to thank everyone that I have interacted with The Hoot. Thank you for making every Thursday night something to look forward to. But also I hate you all because you are making this time to move on so difficult.
Good luck to you all! I know I am leaving the sports section in great hands with Calli Morvay ’26. I am confident that the paper will continue to succeed with everyone happier than ever before because no one has to read my 2000 word baseball articles anymore.
