I was watching a Star Wars marathon a few days after I got back from Yale to good old chilly New York City aka my home. I had never seen the movies sequentially, and I was more than happy to devote over 18 hours of my life (over two days!) to see all the pieces fall into place, to see the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker, the wisdom of Yoda, the mentorship of Obi-Wan. But if there was any one quote—of the several quotable quotes—that stayed with me, it was what Yoda said to Luke Skywalker as he trained young Luke to master the force. Luke cried in anguish that he would never be able to lift the starship out of the swamp—it was just too large and too heavy, but he would certainly try. Yoda bellowed back: “Try not. Do or Do Not. There is No Try.”
In a world full of Tiger Mothers and what seems like perfect straight-A students and kids who get into their Early Action school of choice and those that don’t, it seems that Yoda’s words ring very true. That the world is more black and white, less grey. That it’s about getting that end result instead of that area in between that may be deferral or just truly trying something new and not getting it.
When I came to Yale, I usually went for the Try. I hadn’t done Improv, ever. But I tried out. I had to build on a scene a fellow candidate had just mimed. She had mopped the floor. So I entered and slipped, falling to the floor. There were a few laughs, but I was mostly in awe of my peers, who managed to make me crack up. Consistently.
I had never applied to a Creative Writing Class until my second term senior year. But I decided that I didn’t want to leave Yale without working on my writing more formally. In fact, I hadn’t taken a creative writing class since my senior year of high school. So onward I marched, submitting two pieces from high school. I got a wonderful e-mail response from the professor saying that I was “good.”
And then I tried on a major. Environmental Studies. I took “Farming and Eating in the United States” my freshman year with Melina Shannon-DiPietro, who ran the Yale Sustainable Food Project and oversaw the Yale Farm. I farmed for a summer in New Haven. I wrote for an environmental publication called the Wheel. Yale paid for us to attend the Copenhagen COP 15 Climate Change conference.
No matter the outcomes—I never got into an improv group, into that writing class, and am now Economics & South Asian Studies—I had tried. And, in trying, I had also “done.” All of these experiences in try have been as valuable as that single act of doing successfully in which Yoda steps in to pull out a galactic spaceship from the swamp when Luke Skywalker fails (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qur9LCjz84). Part of what has made college so fun and so humbling isn’t just standing in awe of my amazing peers doing what they do best but also trying, failing, and trying again so I gain perspective on both my strengths and weaknesses. If Yoda were alive today, I’d like to think he would agree with me.