“He doesn’t even go here”: a Mean Girls reference, a declarative sentence and a line many used to define my last two years at Northwestern.

I spent four of my last eight quarters at Northwestern off campus for a variety of reasons. These quarters weren’t back-to-back, so every time I returned to campus, the same pattern emerged.

I’d come back to Northwestern and have a honeymoon period. Every aspect of campus felt new and exciting again, but soon I would realize how out of sync I was with the ebbs and flows of life at NU. My friends had naturally grown just as I had. Their interests and routines were no longer aligned with mine. The social calendar we shared was overtaken by new leadership positions, new relationships and new definitions of what’s fun.

Eventually, I always got back into the swing of things only to leave again with the knowledge that I’d repeat the cycle one or two more times.

This sequence seemed to reinforce the idea that I don’t even go here.

For a while, this made me feel like I was not a part of the Northwestern community I was so excited to join four years ago. I constantly forced myself to remember that I loved and was grateful for every experience that brought me off campus. I had to remind myself that I wouldn’t really want to change any decision I’d made or any opportunity I’d seized. But sometimes, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing out on what college was “really” all about, and the FOMO would grab hold.

Recently, I started to fight the FOMO a little harder.

I realized that if I’m a part of “Our” Northwestern, how I chose to use my four years as a student should be as valid as anyone else’s.

When I brought up this insecurity to my dad, he suggested making a list of the priorities I had for college to be clear as to why I was choosing to leave campus so frequently. By having a list of no more than three goals, I’d have a personal reference to keep me on track despite my FOMO and habit of overthinking. The list can change and evolve, but it needed to always be written and tangible.

The third item on the list changed a few times, but the first two were always to be selfish and to scare myself. This meant that I was aware that, thanks to an amazing set of circumstances, I was able to take four years to not have any responsibilities other than the ones to myself. With immense amount of possibilities at Northwestern, I wasn’t bound to any specific location for any specific reason. I was never sure what life post-graduation would have in store for me, so I wanted to make sure I said yes to every promising opportunity despite how scary it may have seemed at the time.

Without keeping my list of priorities in mind, the fact that I was missing out on formals, late night hang outs and opportunities to be more active in student groups (like NBN) on campus would have paralyzed me and kept me from taking a leap of faith and leaving campus for a quarter. Without this list, hearing a friend joke that “he doesn’t even go here,” would sting and leave a mark. The list became almost like a shield against FOMO.

At the bottom of the list I wrote a reminder to myself, “For now you have a safety net.” I’m beyond lucky to have formed friendships and a community on campus in my first two years that I could come back to, despite how much it may have changed in my absence. I was lucky that when I left I was able to always come back.

So, maybe I missed out on strengthening these bonds, maybe I missed out on creating new relationships or maybe I missed out on some of the greatest moments of my life. I’ll never really know. What I do know is I learned how to navigate a foreign country, I learned tons of things I do and don’t want out of a job, I learned how to form friendships without the structure of a university behind me, I learned how to be alone, I learned how to be scared on the inside but confident on the outside. Most importantly, I learned how to create my own reality. By keeping priorities in mind and realizing the net I had below me, I was able to redefine what going here means.