If there is one thing you should do while at Stanford, it is to fail. Looking back on my years of classes, staffing, extra-curriculars and relationships, I have to say that all the advice I could want to give is summed up by that sentence. Failure is a necessary part of learning and growing and there is no better place to do it than in the comfort of the Stanford bubble.

Most people come to Stanford without having encountered much failure in their lives. They were the star athlete, straight-A student, brilliant musician, computer whiz, or all of the above. Stanford students are really good at never giving themselves the opportunity to fail. "I can't ask her out, if she wants to go out with me she'll ask me." "I didn't do well on that test but that is because I didn't have time to study." When is the last time you let yourself out of the box called "your limits?"

Failure means different things to different people. For some, the hardest thing to do will be taking a class you know you can't get an A in. For others it will be trying out for an A Cappella group and not getting in, or being dumped by someone for the first time. To another person, however, these "failures" might seem only like minor setbacks. Excellence in an area is not a prerequisite for passion. You might be surprised to learn that even though you are tone-deaf, you really love singing.

Since classes and relationships are often the areas where Stanford students worry about failing most, I often tell my freshmen that if you get straight A's at Stanford, you aren't challenging yourself enough. There are classes, somewhere on this campus, where you aren't going to be the best no matter how hard you try. If you never discover the mix of pride and pain behind working the hardest you have ever worked only to get a B, then you aren't taking advantage of what Stanford has to offer. As for relationships, it is no wonder that many never get a chance to start. We are too busy to put in the time and too worried that it wouldn't work out to start one.

Take a detour from your four-year plan and try something you have never done before. I hope when you look back on your Stanford career, you can be pleasantly surprised by the person you have become.

In the real world, we will all fail, probably in a spectacular fashion. So if we don't get good at coping with failure now, we are just going to hit the ground that much harder later on. Where you imagine yourself in ten years, you will probably not be where you thought you would end up. For better or worse, we can't control everything that happens in our lives.

But, change and failure are not all bad. I never expected to work at The Daily or rebuild New Orleans over my spring breaks. I certainly didn't expect to be on academic probation by the end of my freshman year. I didn't realize how hard RAing was going to be or how much I would love it. I am neither co-terming in Aero/Astro Engineering as I had planned nor minoring in Chinese. However, I am pretty happy with where I am going and I couldn't ask for anything more out of my Stanford experience.