What Do You Know?

What are you looking for?

When I left home four years ago, I didn’t know what I was going to find in this tree-tucked, big-city university. I knew I would be playing softball, and I knew I wanted to pursue a neuroscience major, but I stumbled upon so much more.

Believing that my quest was for knowledge, wisdom, and truth, I thought Emory would help me with this quest. I was partially right, but I was also utterly wrong. I didn’t realize it then, but my underlying quest was really for certainty; yet all I found was an overwhelming abundance of ambiguous answers and perplexing questions.

I have thoroughly enjoyed all my classes at Emory. As a neuroscience major and philosophy minor, I am so thankful that I have had the opportunity to take classes covering a range of disciplines. Each perspective is valuable in the way that it enlightens and builds upon another. This is why a liberal arts education is so powerful: It presents a holistic picture of ideas and processes that cannot be revealed through only one field.

Although I consumed as much knowledge as I could in each class, questions lurked behind every corner, and I began to wonder if I really knew anything at all. The climax of my questioning began in the fall semester of my junior year, when I was taking two very thought-provoking classes: modern philosophy, which began in the age of skepticism, and the cognitive science of religion.

I began to question what I thought I knew. I went from believing that I knew who I was, to questioning what I believed, and then to doubting the possibility of meaning in life. In just a few months, I had found nihilism.

Along with this epistemological battle, I soon became entrenched in a mental one as the doubt dragged me into a dark space. At the same time, a chronic injury emerged as a physical struggle that pushed me farther into the darkness. In just a few months, depression found me.

While waiting in this place, wanting someone or something to rescue me, I considered what had gotten me there and what my options were to escape. I realized I had been looking for the wrong thing—I had been looking for certainty because I thought it would be a stable foundation for me to build my ideas, beliefs, and life upon.

Instead, I found that certainty is fleeting and thus impossible to attain. Uncertainty is what I most needed to find during my time at Emory. Despite all the research and evidence that claims to know it all, I had to wrestle with and accept that not everything can be figured out.

Although terrifying at first, it was this realization that granted me a newfound humility and peace that restored my hope in myself, my life, and my faith. In acknowledging my ignorance and limitations, I am compelled to always search for more answers and greater truth, rather than to feel pressured or expected to have it exactly right. I must be willing to adapt my thoughts and ideas while maintaining the core of who I am.

I don’t know where I am headed or what I will find after I leave Emory, but I am excited for whatever my persisting quest brings. In finding uncertainty, I found not only more knowledge, wisdom, and truth, but also perseverance, hope, and strength.