Just before the drop deadline spring quarter of my freshman year, I sat in my advisor’s office, as I debated whether I should drop Introduction to Microeconomics. She looked at me and said the four words that would be more comforting than anything I’ve heard before or since: “It’s okay to fail.”

I came into Northwestern like most freshmen do, still riding the high of being accepted, still feeling like I was finally about to start the rest of my real life. And I tried to start this new life the only way I knew how. I threw myself into school, reading every single word I was supposed to, spending my first Halloween night as a college student in the library working on a paper I really didn’t need to keep working on, talking with my friends about how guilty we felt that we hadn’t done more of our homework over Sunday morning breakfasts. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything; I didn’t go to parties in high school and I was still dating my boyfriend from back home. There wasn’t anything else I could get out of Northwestern besides the grades and the resume I assumed I needed. But deep down I could feel the resentment I was harboring for Northwestern for not making me as happy as I thought it would.

See, we do this paradoxical thing at Northwestern where we bury our heads in our to-do lists, only coming up for air to tell everyone else how behind we are on checking them off. We boast about how many all-nighters we’ve pulled and how many hours straight we spend in the library without leaving. We tell our friends we have way too much to do tonight to grab dinner or go downtown and then wonder why we feel alone. And we do it because we think that’s what we’re supposed to do, because that’s all we see around us. We’re “too cool” to show we care about the the things we actually care about, and we care so damn much about showing we don’t care. There’s an unspoken, invisible list of things we’ve collectively agreed are okay to care about, namely GPAs, prestigious internships and obsessing about those two things.

I can divide my time as a student into almost two halves exactly: my first two years here,when I tried to be this Northwestern version of the Cool Girl—and the last two, when I saw how sad, anxious and lonely that had made me. Freshman and sophomore year I tried to be perfect: I sacrificed sleep so I could hang out with my new friends and get them to like me, never stopping to wonder if I even liked them; I wanted to “beat the odds” and “go the distance” with my high school boyfriend, I was stressed and tired but determined to “power through” to that yet undetermined period of time in my life when I would finally have it all under control. And that still wasn’t enough. I dropped that Micro class because I was failing it. I skipped out on parties because they didn’t seem like they were “my thing.” My long-distance, freshman year relationship was (shockingly) doomed from the start, as was the not-quite-a-rebound one that followed sophomore year. Now I look at that time wishing I could have it back, wishing I would have stopped and asked myself who I was doing all this for. Because it certainly wasn’t for me.

Then, like all stereotypical starry-eyed college students, I studied abroad and realized the world is so so much bigger than the mile of concrete along Sheridan Road. I was the only Northwestern student on my study abroad program; other students came from colleges of all sizes and locations. When I talked to them about people skipping football games on Saturdays to study and having to apply to join student groups, they stared back at me in wide-eyed disbelief. People definitely don’t do that at our schools, they’d say. And that’s when I realized I had to reprioritize. We all came to Northwestern with dreams of making the world better, believing that this campus was the place where we could do so, and somewhere along the way we forgot the reasons we wanted to come here in the first place. We forgot that we care about more than academics. We got scared of being vulnerable with each other for fear that we might break the cardinal rule of Northwestern: Don’t care too much.

When I came back to Evanston, I decided I would no longer feel bad about going to bed before I finished all my reading. I wouldn’t feel bad about doing absolutely nothing all day but sunbathing on the Lakefill. I wouldn’t feel guilty about skipping class to go to a talk. I wouldn’t be afraid to speak up in the NBN newsroom. I wouldn’t spend time with people who didn’t make me happy. I wouldn’t feel stupid for becoming chapter president of my sorority and helping it become more than just a social organization. I would take advantage of all this campus has to offer us outside of classrooms because before we know it, our four years are up and we don’t get them back. At Northwestern we’re walking distance from all our best friends, biking distance from Lake Michigan, a train ride away from Chicago. Now that I’m about to leave, I realize how rare and beautiful that is. I’ve certainly fallen short of this promise to myself many times; it’s not a perfect pursuit but it is a worthwhile one. So, don’t be afraid to fail, don’t be afraid to be unabashedly yourself, don’t be afraid to passionately pursue the things you love, don’t be afraid to take a day off. You, and Northwestern, will be better for it.