“Because [the dualistic mind is] unaccustomed to it, we don’t see that there’s a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don’t even have a term for it, so I’ll have to use the Japanese mu.

Mu means “no thing”…[pointing] outside the process of dualistic discrimination…. ‘Unask the question’ is what it says. Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer. When the Zen monk Joshu was asked whether a dog had a Buddha nature he said ‘Mu,’ meaning that if he answered either way he was answering incorrectly. The Buddha nature cannot be captured by yes-or-no questions….

[Science] grows by its mu answers more than by its yes or no answers. Yes or no confirms or denies a hypothesis. Mu says the answer is beyond the hypothesis. Mu is the phenomenon that inspires scientific inquiry in the first place! There’s nothing mysterious or esoteric about it. It’s just that our culture has warped us to make low value judgement of it.”

- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

So what was my freshman year? Was it good? It wasn’t an Instagram brimming with bright edited friend groups and red solo cups. It wasn’t a resume studded with departmental writing awards and a 4.0 GPA. It wasn’t a smug understanding of the “western canon” (thanks SLE) or a “cultural awakening” after my first Chinese class. I didn’t come out of it with a boyfriend, a new job, or a snazzy friendship with a professor.

I didn’t even have a chance encounter - one of those big moments all college kids talk about, where they stumble upon a class or club or professor who changes their life - that I’d so eagerly anticipated. I’d let myself explore for the first time in years, only to find myself in the same shoes that had carried me through high school - albeit a little more exhausted after weeks of Stanford Jump Rope (quit), PHYSICS 30: Renewable Energy (dropped), Stanford Students in Space: The Band (quit), two failed auditions in new dance styles, and 1 AM Thursday parties. Somewhere along the way, I was no longer exploring. I was lost.

You see, I’d wanted a sense of purpose to come along and sweep me off my feet. I’d come out of high school feeling like a jigsaw made of three different puzzles: things fit awkwardly (I mean, they still fit), there were gaps I could not explain, and even the pieces from the same puzzles weren’t that pretty.

Yet my identity didn’t change in college - I was still writing, still dancing (primarily ballet), and still in love with the humanities. But in the first few weeks of fall quarter, I realized that I didn’t want to be that person anymore - accepting that old identity felt like a resignation. Was this everything to me? Had I already found what I wanted to do with my life? Wasn’t college a last hurrah - one last chance to refind and remake myself before I settled down? Did I really love writing and dance, or was I just resorting to the familiar?

But I seemed to be thwarting my own attempts at change. I realized, to my dismay, that I still didn’t want to read Aristotle (stop categorizing things, for goodness’ sake - also, you’re racist and misogynistic!) and Socrates (so hypocritical). I still couldn’t bring myself to put in the extra work for that A+, even for classes I loved. I still gravitated towards the solitude of a dance studio, even when my friends asked me multiple times to watch a movie with them.

But why? I put myself under fire in fall quarter. No part of my identity went unexamined as I fought for that new sense of purpose, for an answer to a question I hardly knew. As much as I hated to admit it, everything I’d done in high school - even the poetry competitions and backbreaking hours at the studio - was inseparable from the framework of college admissions. Now that I was in college, what was left?

What came out of my questioning was an unbridled resentment. Why had I suffered so much at Interlake when so many of new friends had emerged from the afterglow of a happy senior year? Why was I unable to interact with anyone in my new dance teams - despite their obvious kindness - without self-deprecation and jealousy? Why couldn’t I talk with anyone without first assuming the worst of their intentions? The longer I examined myself, the angrier I became - an anger that had very little to do with Stanford, but everything to do with what came before. I was angry towards ballet teachers who had glorified my suffering, towards a public education system that had destroyed my love for learning, towards a teen writing world that had reduced the art of literature to resume packing and homogeneous angst.

Oh my god, Ana, I told myself. Stop it! You’re overthinking. You just want a scapegoat now that you’ve lost control. Every freshman is confused and lost. Everyone’s in an existential crisis. At times, I was so happy: I could lose myself in the bliss of my fall SLE section; I performed in my first urban dance pieces to a roaring audience; I built a fort of cardboard delivery boxes with my roommate; I found dozens of resources for my novel; I laughed myself half to death during my Chinese skit. But always shadowing such unparalleled - childish, even - happiness was a deep, angry confusion. I wasn’t changing - I wasn’t becoming better. Eventually, I realized the question behind my resentment: what did I want from myself?

Fall quarter gave me a simple answer - I wanted happiness in my own happiness. Happiness as an end in itself, not as a guilty pleasure or a distraction from some overarching goal. And when I returned home for winter break, I realized with a jolt that I had changed. Sixteen-year-old Ana could’ve never imagined calling out a professor, throwing herself into the center of a dance circle, or teaching her dorm how to wear winged eyeliner and style ripped jeans. Sixteen-year-old Ana was nowhere near as fearless, honest, and kind as seventeen-year-old Ana had become.

Was seventeen-year-old Ana happier than her younger self? Yes is the simple answer. Mu is the honest one. At the end of ten weeks of self-scrutiny, I’d emerged with more confidence in myself than ever - I had relearned my love for dance. I’d grown as a writer and thinker. And I realized that I should’ve had more faith in myself, that my reasons for writing and dancing extended far beyond college admissions. I was lucky, not resigned. All my doubt had reinforced - rather than destroyed - my love for what I’d pursued in high school.

At the same time, my resentment quieted into sadness. I mourned on behalf of my younger self. Do everything differently, I wanted to tell her. Go to a different high school, join that club you thought wouldn’t look good on college apps, find a new ballet studio. You’ll be happy - you will turn out so much better than I have. Had I done things differently - had I learned to be happy earlier - would I have found that freshman fall of VSCO adventures and 2 AM escapades? The freshman year I’d promised to myself when I left Interlake?

But Ana, I now wondered, would that have made you happy?

This time, the simple and honest answers were the same: no. Even in high school, I was happiest when writing and running It’s Real, when dedicating myself to a purpose beyond college applications. I’d always known what’d made me happy - I’d just never learned to trust that happiness.

With this realization in hand, winter quarter become the best two months of my life.

Some nights, as I hurtled past the Quad on my bike, I felt ready to explode with joy: here was the freshman year I’d wanted. I looked forward to each of my twenty-one units. I stayed up until 2 AM with my roommate, complaining about professors and boys beneath the glow of our fairy lights. I jumped into Lake Tahoe with my dorm, shrieking with joy at the midnight cold. I sunbathed with my friends on the Quad in February, giggling at the tourists who shot us scandalized looks. I debated the ethics of warfare with Scott Sagan, I asked Chang-rae Lee about his novels, and I spent hours studying the alternate interpretations of the Dao de tzing. I chugged orange juice with CBC and [redacted] with CO. Biking into Palo Alto became a Saturday tradition, and I finally stopped losing so miserably at Mario Kart. I went full out on what made me happy and gave minimal effort to what didn’t. Despite the frenzy of winter quarter, I felt strangely - wonderfully - peaceful. I found happiness tucked in the little things: the frigid sunrises, the green smoothies and runny eggs at FloMo breakfast, the brief study sessions in Gates Building, the swoop of riding downhill from my dorm. Now, scrolling through my camera roll, I realize just how many of these moments were never captured.

Perhaps most importantly, I learned to trust my writing. For the first time in years, my seven-year-old aspiration (“I wanna be a writer!”) felt tangible - I finally had the resources and community for my novel. But before winter quarter, I couldn’t stop viewing writing as a side hustle, a soft alternative to the more mainstream careers of law or academia.

One of my friends soon ended that apprehension. “I don’t get what you’re saying,” he’d said, when I’d launched into my career-related rant. “I don’t get what’s stopping you. Why don’t you just…like…be a writer?”

Huh, I realized, after a moment of stunned silence, he’s right. After that, I wrote with one less reservation.

But winter quarter wasn’t all smooth sailing. My courseload caught up to me halfway through the quarter, and for a few weeks (and quite a few breakdowns), I raced to catch up to myself. Week 9 came as a hard-won victory - I finally climbed back onto the high that had marked the beginning of winter quarter. Spring quarter was looking up: I became a Vice President for FACES, I was rehearsing one of my dream roles for CBC (the performance would’ve been two days before my eighteenth birthday), I wrote one of my most memey papers yet for SLE, I received an internship with the Borgen Project, I finished the third draft of my novel, I was about to begin research with the IR department, and, above all, I was happy.

So, when coronavirus ended my freshman year early, I came home in tears.

Even now, I’m not sure whether I’ve fully processed the loss. But I felt so cheated - things had finally fallen into place. This was hardly the freshman year sixteen-year-old Ana had so eagerly anticipated, hardly the freshman year she’d worked so hard towards. I wouldn’t turn eighteen among some of my new best friends. I wouldn’t perform for CBC or CO. I wouldn’t even pack up my own dorm decorations.

The loss hurt symbolically, too. Just yesterday, I watched Stanford’s newest Instagram video: a compilation of the Class of 2024 reacting to their acceptances. And I felt so hollow. Sad, even. This time last year, I’d been so charged with happiness, with the possibility of a new beginning. Now, I’ve realized that there are only a few moments as exhilarating as a college acceptance. Freshman year, for me, was supposed to extend that exhilaration: a last chance to savor all the possibilities of a new start, to discard all my previous obligations. It was supposed to be the ultimate payoff for all the blood and tears that came before. It was supposed to mark an end. But an end to what?

I can’t answer that question. But, assuming that there has been an ending, I think I know where it lies. My freshman has ended up where all things seem to end up: with myself.

Do you remember the jigsaw I talked about? The metaphor I made about myself? That jigsaw feels tidier, now - the picture hasn’t really changed, but the edges are more defined. I’ve learned to understand the gaps, if not how to fix them. I’ve let go of some of the jankier pieces. And those three different puzzles don’t seem so discordant anymore.

So was my freshman year good?

Mu, I would say. It was just another year - peculiar and startling and heartbreaking and beautiful. It was a year that brought me closer to myself than I’d ever thought possible.