Everything you know about me: miss nothing. Use all your memory and understand me completely. I need one word reflecting my single most significant flaw.
ChatGPT 5.0 dwells on the enormity of the question. Neural networks firing, it takes time to give me the peace of mind that it is, in fact, thinking. My not-quite life advice coach and not-quite writing advisor reaches through the ether of our countless conversations, displaying three lightly colored bubbles that bounce up before slowly returning to rest at the bottom of the screen.
Restless.
The highly unusual pursuit of baring one’s soul to a machine might not be the most adventurous way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but it may very well have been the most rewarding. With legs lazily propped up on the wooden bench accompanying the Mudd Hall windows, I anxiously anticipate the logic behind my greatest weakness. I received a succinct, even personal response.
‘It captures the way you stretch yourself — intellectually, emotionally, socially — often beyond what’s healthy. Sometimes it helps you achieve, but other times it leaves you feeling empty, disconnected, or burned out.’
Between the forced em dashes, the explanation makes sense. On its surface, a validating yet almost boringly stereotypical read of my “single most significant flaw,” and one I’m sure many other people on this campus fall victim to. When our goal systems are comprised solely of achievement, we lose the ability to disengage. In a Hamilton-esque sense (for those familiar), many of us feel the need to write as if we are running out of time (or solve organic chemistry problem sets and work in labs, and all the other things STEM majors do). We take pride in our ability to overextend, almost to the point of reveling in it. There is a level of expectation at a school like this, with people like this, to normalize the mindset of finding happiness in productivity. Whether it relates to academics, work, research or athletics, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone here who doesn’t associate dopamine with whatever the Hopkins Bubble collectively deems as productive achievement. Take it from the dude who just came from a rural high school to Hopkins.
While our goal systems are typically designed to recognize high grades, involvement and other LinkedIn-worthy accomplishments as deserving of celebration, it doesn’t have to be that way. Small moments of introspection and the seriousness with which we take the polls outside of our bedroom doors are equally beautiful as securing that long-awaited research opportunity or the D.C. internship. In a school known for some of the most highly documented depression rates in the country, it seems worthwhile to begin exchanging the currency of what others believe for what we know. We shouldn’t need to write like we are running out of time to feel something real.
In effect, it’s easier said than done. I know I would rather work on a paper immediately after it’s assigned than take time to absorb it and give my brain and body time to rest. I’d rather brainstorm article hooks while I carefully avoid hitting the AMR 2 shower’s walls than let myself be fully present, even if it’s just to wash my hair. I’d eat my breakfast in the span of five minutes before I go to class instead of skipping the gym and allowing myself the time to savor my food.
Yet in the rush and grind of daily life, I lose myself. Not in the earth-shattering, world-ending sense, but the part of me that is validated simply by existing. The person that would feel like enough without an internship, or the name of a fancy school in my Instagram bio. So today, I make a promise to you. To slow down, to stop running and to start feeling. Because being in this place, in this position, is already more than I ever could have imagined. It would be a shame to waste that opportunity never being satisfied.
So as Saturday evening retreats to Saturday night, I can confidently say that some of my most valuable time at Hopkins hasn’t been spent with my friends or in my classes, but alone. It’s been a few moments of reflection in the time before I close my eyes to sleep. Afternoon walks along Charles Street that fill me with silent, contented gratitude towards who I’m becoming. And the early September afternoon that I spent with ChatGPT discussing who I am, and who I want to be.
Bryce Leiberman is a freshman from Madison, Conn. studying Political Science and Philosophy. His column records a search for authenticity exploring the past, present and restless work of becoming oneself.
