When I first got into my Early Decision school, Northwestern University, I decided I was going to live the perfect life at my dream school. I had it all planned out, and nothing was going to go wrong. Only perfect things were going to happen at my perfect school, and I would accept nothing less.

In the spring before I started school, I had to make the first revision to my master plan; three days before the roommate decision deadline, my original roommate decided to go to another university.

After the biggest freak-out of my life, I found a new roommate within 12 hours after 20 minutes of talking. I spent the rest of the summer worried that I had already started off on the wrong foot. However, my plan had to go on, and I began to build up an image of the clubs, classes, and organizations I would be a part of.

I knew, though, it wasn’t going to be easy. The culture at Northwestern is highly competitive, and before I started my first quarter, I was worried about how I would react to failure.

I did not have to wait long before I experienced my fear. I failed my first final, realized my journalism major was not for me, and was dropped from clubs I really cared about. More revisions were made to my plan.

On top of that, it felt like can impossibility to have a hard time at my dream school while others were feeling the same thing at a college that wasn’t their first choice.

My brain couldn’t reconcile the fact that I could have bad days at this perfect place. Ultimately, my plan had to be scrapped.

What I did not expect was that I would feel so free without the restrictions of a blueprint. By choice, I am now a data science minor and not in the Asian magazine I was convinced I would be a part of. I ended up trying things I never would have thought I would do, and to my surprise, I loved it.

At the end of the day, nothing can be perfect, not even a dream school.

Although I wish that my master plan was fufilled, I still consider Northwestern my happy place, and I’m still living a life I could only have dreamed of when I was younger. I now know I can allow myself to be unhappy, even at my dream school.

Your college experience, including admissions, will rarely go just the way you want it. Whether that means allowing redirection into your life or finding peace in something you did not expect to happen to you, know that you are not alone in this.

Although the circumstances in which my roommate and I met each other was less than ideal, and we barely knew each other when we made the decision to live together, I can not imagine my life without her now.

She is my best friend, my biggest supporter, and makes me better in every way. Even though she was definitely not a part of my master plan, she is one of the biggest reasons that I realized that life cannot be planned.

My life looks a little different than what I envisioned coming into college, and I’m still coming to terms with that, but all I can do is look forward.