Kris Jordan

The past couple of weeks have been stressful. The big decision has been where will I be next year? Where is my future? The choice was between University of Colorado: Boulder, Columbia University, Brown University, and the University of North Carolina. I could easily weed out Boulder and Columbia for financial reasons. The most compelling offers were Brown and UNC. Providence vs. Chapel Hill.

This wouldn’t be a hard choice if I didn’t love Chapel Hill. I love this place. This weather. This basketball team. This state. These professors. I know Chapel Hill. I know how amazing it is. That is why it isn’t easy to say good bye. It isn’t easy to leave when unforced.

I did not have to make a decision until April 15th, and I didn’t intend to, but I made it yesterday. My thoughts were consumed with internal debate for one school or the other. School work has been piling up while I was sitting pensively reading everything I could about Brown and about UNC. The simple decision was weighing me down. So I made it.

The letter is in the mail. I will be enrolled in Brown University’s Computer Science Ph.D. program this August.

My reasoning went as follows: I want to maximize the value of the next 5 years in school. The value of school is learning and growing. Brown’s professors specialize in different areas and teach in different ways than UNC’s. I should encounter different ideas and schools of thought (no pun intended) therefore learning more. Brown is in New England. It will not have North Carolina culture. It will not have North Carolina weather. It will not have North Carolina (or even Chapel Hill) rent. Growing is achieved through persevering challenges, facing fears, taking risks, and expanding horizons. These challenges will force me to grow and adapt. It will be more difficult. For these reasons it is the road I’ve chosen.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

-Frost