I believe that seemingly small decisions can have a big effect on the outcome of your entire life course.
This statement seems hard-hitting, and I’m definitely not saying that every little decision that one makes is going to completely change their entire life, but when I look back on my life and I think about how I got to where I am now, I can definitely trace huge things that affected who I am today all the way back to a split decision that I made in a second and didn’t think twice about.
One huge part of my life that I can trace back to a single split second moment is how I was exposed to Penn State. To start off, I am from Naples, Florida, pretty far from State College, PA. I was a junior in high school and one of my teachers was encouraging us to start thinking about places to apply to college. I’ve always had a desire to go out of state, but really had no idea where I would be interesting in going to school. As I was sitting in class, I was so stumped on where to even start looking for potential universities that I decided to have a little fun and look up a “What college is best for you” quiz. After clicking the first link I saw, and quickly going through the questions not thinking twice about what I was putting down, the quiz calculated my answers and I saw the words “Penn State University” pop up at the bottom. I specifically remembered thinking to myself how funny would this be if I ended up at this university. I added it to a list of universities to look into and then went about the rest of my day. I had no familiarity with Penn State before I took the quiz, and would have never even considered it otherwise.
After applying to ten other schools and narrowing it down to a few that I was very interested in visiting, I finally visited Penn State and was absolutely astonished how amazing it was. I couldn’t believe that I had never even heard much about this school and it was so incredible. I decided on the first day of that visit that this was the school I wanted to go to.
I still to this day can’t believe how lucky it was for me to have been lost enough to take a silly quiz in that moment, where one different answer on the quiz could have led me to a completely different school and a completely different life. It definitely made me realize how seemingly small and meaningless everyday decisions can lead you to something truly incredible.