<p>I know this is a long post but please read it! </p>
<p>First of all, for those of you who were at Admit Weekend I hope you had a great time! For any of you who didn’t have a great time and thought it was the most horribly awkward weekend of your life, I just want to let you know that it’s entirely possible that you would still love Stanford. I encourage you to speak up about what you didn’t love and current students can give you a sense of if it’s part of Stanford culture or just Admit weekend culture. I hope any of you will feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions. </p>
<p>This next point is really important. I recognize that it won’t mean much to you now, but hopefully if it’s relevant to you later you’ll remember this post. First of all, I want make it clear that Stanford is a great place, I love Stanford, I really do think it’s as good as college gets. That said, your life won’t be suddenly perfect when you get here. You might seriously struggle academically for the first time in your life. You might become incredibly home sick. You might have close friends or family members pass away. Life continues with its ups and downs. You’ll find that the Stanford duck syndrome is all too true. I highly encourage those of you who are struggling in any way at Stanford at any time (current students too!) to feel comfortable expressing that and getting help if it’s ever needed. I think the duck syndrome is my #1 complaint about Stanford. It’s too easy to assume you are the only one who’s having any trouble adjusting, when in truth I’m sure you’re never alone. Your residential staff is happy to listen, there are tons of resources on campus designed to help you, plus you can always just talk to your peers. For any of you who are Christian, I know the Christian community offers a safe place to talk about this as well. It’s not that there is anything about Stanford in particular that I expect will make you incredibly unhappy, but just adjusting to college, adjusting to a place where everyone else is at least as smart as you, just living life, all these things can be rough at times at any school. I do think Stanford is a great place to be as a student and I hope many of you have begun to see that for yourself.</p>