My Northwestern acceptance went to my spam folder.

Years later, my mom and I still laugh about this story. Way, way back in those bygone days of early April 2011, my senior year of high school was coming to a head. Just like in the penultimate episode of an HBO season, there were a lot of plot elements in play, because my senior year was a busy one (it’s always taken me a bit to get into the swing of things, which is why my power rankings for college years are the same for high school: 1. Junior 2. Senior 3. Freshman 4. Sophomore). I was editor-in-chief of my school newspaper, working closely with the art director to put our final deluxe issue together by deadline (we had to ditch Senior Ditch Day to finish it), plus finishing up the school’s annual literary magazine, prepping for a couple AP exams, working downtown on Friday nights, and oh yeah, trying to get some healthy exercise in here and there.

I specifically remember that last one because I was at the local YMCA when I saw the first status about Northwestern. My friend had gotten in! I rushed home to check my email … but there was nothing. Uh oh. I started to freak out, but my mom counseled going to sleep instead. Since I had been at school until 8 p.m. laying out newspaper pages, and then jogged a couple miles, I did not need much cajoling, and thankfully slept like the dead.

Obviously, the first thing I did out of bed the next morning was beeline for the computer. My email inbox still lacked anything with a heading of “Northwestern” or “acceptance” or “congratulations.” My heart sank, until I thought of something else, one of those ideas that only occur to you in the sleepy, Pop Tart-fueled haze of early morning. I checked my “Spam” folder.

I retell this story here not just to make my mom laugh, but to get at perhaps the greatest lesson of my time at college: the infinite contingency of reality. I’m sorry if that sounds a tad academic; I’m still mired in a few final papers. The best way to illustrate this concept is through examples, anyway.

Let’s start with the spam folder kerfuffle. What happens if I don’t randomly decide to check there? Well, I would have gotten a fat folder in the mail a few days later and everything would’ve been fine, probably. But the most important email of my life landing in the literal garbage is a good illustration of how often important things hang on a thread. If I don’t get that Northwestern acceptance, I probably don’t study journalism, since only one of my safety schools had a journalism program. I certainly don’t make the same connections or learn the same things. It’s only been four years, but if at the beginning some Northwestern admissions official had decided not to accept me, my life would be totally, incomprehensibly different.

That’s almost too big to properly grasp, so here’s another example, one most Northwestern students are all too familiar with: rejection from a campus student organization. I had the time of my life at Project Wildcat (in this time of endings, I find myself thinking a lot about the beginning) and applied to become a counselor. This time there was no acceptance accidentally in my spam; I got a real rejection, and I was despondent. Freshman year was the crucible in which we started to forge our post-high school high identity, so I was particularly vulnerable to rejection.

Eventually, of course, I moved on. Because I didn’t need to be available in early September to counsel young PWilders, I was able to study abroad in Paris during the fall of my junior year. My stay in Paris was not only one of my most rewarding college experiences (remember those power rankings – junior year rocked) but also immersed me in the study of Critical Theory. Specifically, Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, which reads text (and people, and the world) as an infinitely interconnected process, each individual text (or person) full of traces of others. I wouldn’t go so far as to spout clichés like “when one door closes…” but my Northwestern experience does suggest that if I’m happy with where I am, then all the low points couldn’t have been that bad.

When I look back at my time at Northwestern, I see a web of infinitely complex decisions that all added up to a fun four years. This probably isn’t the best of all possible worlds, but all things considered, I’m pretty satisfied with it. The difficult task ahead of me is to use this lesson to stop freaking out about the future.

After four years of splitting my time into manageable, three-month chunks, I’m now staring at an unpredictable future. Without a post-college gig set up, I feel a bit like Yoda in the prequels: “the Dark Side clouds everything. Impossible to see, the future is.” But if all the twists and turns at Northwestern (I didn’t even get into the various internship choices that shaped my resume and career path, because I don’t want to bore you to death) have taught me anything, it’s to have faith in the contingency. Things could always turn around.