Written by Megan Li
I am a competitive person, and when I came to Hillsdale, I was ready to put that competitiveness to full use. I was determined to claw my way to the top—as I had in high school—and remain the best among my college peers.
It did not take long for reality to kick in. As soon as I looked at the syllabus in my first class of freshman year, I realized academic success was not going to come easily at Hillsdale. Even the high school valedictorians that surrounded me faltered when confronted with each course’s heavy workload, undeniably brilliant professor, and challenging, time-consuming assignments. Gone were the days when I could write an essay in a day and earn an A—this was college, and this was Hillsdale.
As my time as a student went on, the more I realized the purpose of education was never to get a group of straight-A high school students together to continue their status quo. Edmund Burke Fairfield, president of Hillsdale College from 1848 to 1869, put it best in his speech, “The College and the Republic,” delivered at the laying of the cornerstone of Central Hall: “Education gives to each man an individual personality … It is a continual process of self-revelation, introducing him into the hidden arcana of his own intellectual nature, making him acquainted with his own powers and capacities.”
Because education is the process of feeding the flame that already burns in each one of us, each student is set on a different path that no one else can walk. The pressure I felt to earn the best grades in the class or land the most reputable internship had ebbed away. Not only do neither of those things bring true fulfillment or determine your worth in Christ, they are not tried-and-true methods for success. The course of the future has never, in all of humankind’s history, been the same for two individuals, so what is the use of forgetting my own path in my striving to follow another’s?
Despite the small student body, Hillsdale draws real diversity out of its applicants in background, talent, and especially thought. The real strength of that diversity is each individual’s ability to help another. The straight-A students inspire my pursuit of academic excellence and knowledge for the sake of itself. The social butterflies remind me of the importance of cultivating and preserving lifelong friendships, through which the virtues of patience, kindness, and love bloom. The lifestyles of athletes tell me about the power of discipline and the necessity of strengthening the body along with the mind.
As your fellow students at Hillsdale provide encouragement to you where you need it, you will become just that for others. My world is now bigger, not just in connections, internships, and job experiences, but in the people I have met and loved, the professors that have so patiently helped me every step of the way, and the people I have yet to meet as I go out into the world.
My desire to be the very best has faded away, but I work hard because I am surrounded by hard-working people. I work hard because I have friends and mentors reminding me what I am capable of. I work hard because excellence is a virtue that inspires love for your work in your soul—and to be full of love for the task that lies before you and the people that are around you makes life beautiful.
My strength to rejoice in the challenges of Hillsdale—all the papers, the midterms, not to mention the confusion of growing older—comes from those I choose to surround myself with. Under the heat of academic challenges, we are shaped into diamonds, and we race past our limits with flying colors. At Hillsdale, I have truly understood the meaning of “the sky’s the limit.”
Megan Li, ’27, is studying economics and journalism. When she isn’t consuming an unhealthy amount of caffeine to finish her homework, you can find her curled up with a good book, taking photos outdoors, or playing her guitar.
Published in May 2025
