Newly Graduated. Once Again, Terrified.

May 29, 2025

The Kissing Hand

When I was five years old, my mother read to me The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. It was the only thing that calmed me down before attending my first day of elementary school.

I was nervous. Uneasy. Afraid of what the future might hold.

This week, I graduated college. I remember my first day on campus with vivid detail. My heart was beating out of my chest as we drove through Historic Princeton. After fully unpacking in Walker Hall, I headed for the dining hall for what was the most uncomfortable lunch of my life. I sat down for maybe five minutes with a few of my new peers before telling them I had forgotten something from my family.

This was a lie. I didn’t forget anything. I was sweating. I was lightheaded. I was so anxious about starting college that I wanted to see my family one last time in hopes that they could calm me down. I was petrified.

Somehow, they helped me muster the courage to head back to Wucox to finish my chicken wings. I was not naturally great at making new friends, so those first few hours felt extremely lonely as I struggled to find the right words to introduce myself to strangers.

I was nervous. Uneasy. Afraid of what the future might hold.

In many ways, I’ve grown over the last four years. My confidence in speaking to strangers has grown. My confidence in my academic abilities has grown. My confidence in my ability to lead has grown. There were so many unique transformational moments at Princeton, it would be impossible to enumerate them all.

While I am truly proud of the strides I’ve made, I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion since graduation.

I am nervous. Uneasy. Afraid of what the future might hold.

Living with predefined goalposts

Reflecting on my life, I’ve recognized that this bucket of emotions tends to peak its nasty head during every major life transition— from elementary to middle school, from middle to high school, from high school to college, and now, from college to “the real world.”

These transitions are predefined for children. I never decided at the age of 14 that it was time to begin high school. That is just what adults decided for me. For as long as I’ve lived, I’ve had these predefined cycles guiding me from one stage of life to the next.

As I move on from school, for the first time in my life, these sturdy goalposts no longer exist. Sure, major life transitions can (and will) still occur. Leaving a stable job to start something new. Moving into a new home. Getting down on one knee and proposing. These are ambitions of mine which qualify as major life transitions.

But nobody will again tell me when to show up to graduation. Before, I have had to encounter difficult emotions regardless of whether I felt ready. The time had simply come. Now, it is up to me to decide when the time has come for a major transition— and for the first time in my life, grapple with these emotions voluntarily.

This might sound like a very long-winded way of concluding that “change is scary.” But I think there is more to it.

Deep confidence

I am a firm believer that people cannot will their way towards confidence. You can’t listen to meditative thoughts while you sleep so they seep into your subconscious and reappear when you wake up. (I’ve tried.) “Fake it ‘till you make it” only goes so far.

People tend to assume that doing great things requires confidence. Many try to scrap together confidence out of thin air to achieve their goals. “I’ll learn to be confident, and then I’ll do the thing.”

But this is backwards. Even if you project confidence outwards towards the world around you, when you go to sleep at night, and you are alone with your thoughts, you will know whether or not you are deeply confident. Deep confidence is an unwavering internal belief in one’s strengths and capabilities.

The bad news is that deep confidence cannot be faked. The good news is that deep confidence is a side effect, not a prerequisite, to doing something great.

To acquire deep confidence requires jumping into the deep end with the unfounded belief that you can achieve a goal without knowing a priori that it is actually achievable. It must be a goal lofty enough such that if you had this achievement under your belt, you’d have no choice but to be confident. “I’ll do the thing, and then I’ll have no choice but to be confident.”

I’ve done this by doing things I didn’t know were possible beforehand. For instance, I lacked a great deal of deep confidence in my general intellect a few years ago. But after graduating Summa Cum Laude with a degree in computer science from Princeton University, it is hard for me to genuinely deny in myself a level of reasonable competence.

Now, as I leave behind school and embark on a new journey in the professional world, I recognize these familiar feelings. Nerves. Unease. Fear. But I know that I’ve been here before. I know that these feelings are par for the course when starting something new. I know I’ve overcome them before. And I know that confidence won’t trump these feelings until I give myself no choice otherwise.

I think this is worth acknowledging, because otherwise, I may end up waiting an entire lifetime in hopes of finding “the right time” to act boldly. It may never feel like the right time to start a startup, or pick up a new hobby, or carve a unique path for myself. But I know that I won’t be waiting for the right time. I won’t be waiting until I feel confident. And I won’t be waiting for feelings of nerves, unease, and fear to subside.

Every time I’ve experienced this devilish cocktail of emotions, it has followed with a period of immense personal growth. If I manage to remain logical under times of emotional duress, I’ll realize these feelings may precede another canon event for personal growth in my life— and I will no longer have to wait for predefined goalposts to tell me when it is time to grow.