Beyond the Margin

Once, the humanities were the heart of human civilization—the foundation of leadership, ethics, and culture. Philosophy gave us wisdom, history taught us lessons, literature captured the human experience, and the arts allowed us to express the inexpressible. Today, these disciplines are being stripped of their value, dismissed as impractical, and suffocated under the weight of a world obsessed with efficiency and profit.

Governments slash funding for the humanities. Universities, even the most prestigious Ivy League institutions, reduce them to mere electives, treating them as luxuries rather than necessities. Students are told to major in STEM or finance because “that’s where the jobs are.” The result? A generation trained to code, calculate, and optimize—but not to think, reflect, or question.

From Education to Job Training

Education was once about the pursuit of wisdom. Now, it’s about employability. Colleges are no longer shaping leaders, thinkers, and visionaries—they’re producing workers, ready to slot into the corporate machine. Software engineers replace statesmen. Data analysts replace philosophers. We are no longer asked to seek meaning, only to maximize output.

But without the humanities, what are we? If we stop teaching history, we forget our mistakes. If we abandon philosophy, we lose our moral compass. If we dismiss literature, we erase empathy. If we reduce art to entertainment, we strip it of its power to inspire and provoke.

The Cost of a Soulless Future

We are moving toward a world where we do things simply because we can, not because we should. Where ethics become an afterthought, and progress is measured in algorithms and profit margins. A world where artificial intelligence mimics human creativity, but no one remembers why creativity mattered in the first place.

And the most tragic part? Many won’t notice what’s missing—because the loss of the humanities happens gradually. The decline of deep thought, the erosion of cultural memory, the slow numbing of the human spirit. People will wake up one day in a world optimized for productivity, but devoid of purpose.

Can We Still Save Ourselves?

Is this inevitable? Or can we resist? The answer lies in whether we are willing to fight for what makes us human. Not just STEM, but wisdom. Not just efficiency, but meaning. Not just knowledge, but understanding.

The death of the humanities is not just the death of academic disciplines—it is the death of our ability to think critically, to appreciate beauty, to understand our past, and to guide our future. And if we let that die, then humanity dies with it.

The question is: Will we realize it before it’s too late?

In the quiet moments between classes, I often find my thoughts splitting into a thousand directions, like light through a prism. One second I'm considering medical school, the next I'm designing virtual worlds, and somewhere in between, I'm contemplating whether these career paths will even exist in their current form when I get there. My mind feels like a browser with too many tabs open—each one essential, each one demanding attention. Some might call it ADHD; I call it living in 2025.

Yesterday, my English professor mentioned something that struck me: MLA citation guidelines for websites were only created three decades ago. It seems almost quaint now, like teaching someone to operate a horse-drawn carriage. In just three years, we've watched generative AI evolve from producing basic texts to crafting nuanced arguments that rival PhD-level discourse. OpenAI’s o3 model can now engage in complex Ph.D. level theoretical discussions that would have seemed impossible even a year ago. It makes me wonder: what are we really preparing for when we write these college application essays?

The irony doesn't escape me that while I'm writing about the future of human thought, my words might be among the last generation of purely human-generated essays. But perhaps that's exactly why they matter more now than ever. In the shower tonight—where all my best thoughts seem to occur and evaporate just as quickly—I realized something: maybe the point isn't to have a clear trajectory anymore. Maybe adaptability itself is the skill we need most.

When I try to envision myself five years from now, the image blurs like a photograph taken in motion. Will we still write essays, or will we be co-creating with AI, focusing more on curation and critical thinking than raw production? Will the very concept of a "career path" become obsolete in a world where jobs transform faster than university programs can adapt to teach them?

What fascinates me most is the dance between human consciousness and artificial intelligence—like two celestial bodies orbiting each other, each warping the other's gravitational field. Sometimes I imagine my thoughts as a garden where wild ideas grow freely, untamed and unpruned, while AI's thoughts are like a perfectly manicured French garden, precise but perhaps missing the beauty of chaos. The thinking process isn't just a journey anymore; it's becoming an art form in itself, like jazz improvisation in a world of perfectly composed classical pieces.

My thoughts don't follow the clean, algorithmic paths that AI excels at—they leap like quantum particles, existing in multiple states simultaneously. One moment I'm contemplating neural networks, the next I'm wondering if consciousness is just the universe's way of experiencing itself, and somehow these seemingly disconnected thoughts weave together into a tapestry that makes sense only to the human mind. It's messy, inefficient, and gloriously alive.

So when people ask about my goals after high school, I think of water. Water doesn't have a goal, yet it shapes mountains, creates valleys, and finds paths where none existed before. It adapts, transforms, and maintains its essential nature while changing everything it touches. Perhaps that's what I'm meant to do—not follow a predetermined path, but flow through the landscape of future possibilities, carving new channels as the terrain of technology and society shifts beneath us.

In this era where artificial intelligence can replicate human output with increasing precision, maybe our greatest strength lies not in our ability to think linearly or logically, but in our capacity to dream illogically, to make impossible connections, to be brilliantly, unapologetically undefined. While AI excels at finding patterns in chaos, we excel at finding beauty in uncertainty, meaning in randomness, and possibility in the unknown.

After all, in a future where everything can be optimized, maybe the most valuable thing we can offer is our beautiful inefficiency, our glorious inconsistency, our ability to find meaning in the spaces between the logical and the absurd. I don't need a map—I am the cartographer of my own undefined future, drawing boundaries that shift like sand dunes in the wind of change.

I can't help but watch the seniors around me with a mix of fascination and dread. Here I am, not even there yet, and I'm already questioning everything about this college admissions circus that's waiting for me.

Something feels off about the whole thing. I watch everyone obsessing over getting into "good schools," and I keep wondering: why? I've done my research – the statistics don't lie. Being a straight-A student doesn't guarantee you'll be more successful in life. Yet here we all are, preparing to throw ourselves into this pressure cooker like it's the only path forward.

Watching another Ivy Day approach, I see what's coming for me next year. I see the seniors around me now – people I know, people I've looked up to – turning into balls of stress and anxiety. They're about to face their decisions, and I'm sitting here thinking about how this will be me in just a matter of months.

I watch them talk about:

Their endless nights studying for APs and IBs

The SAT and ACT prep consuming their lives

How they're so worn down from sports and club leadership positions that they're falling asleep in class

Those moments when they duck into the bathroom just to breathe because it all feels like too much

And I have to ask: Is this really what we're all supposed to aspire to?

Don't get me wrong – I see their determination. I see their grit. I see how incredibly hard they're working. But I also see the toll it's taking, and I can't help but wonder if there's something broken about a system that makes teenagers feel like their entire future hinges on a single decision from a college admissions office.

The seniors keep saying these colleges will never know their full stories – all the obstacles they've overcome, all the personal battles they've fought while maintaining their perfect GPAs. And they're right. How can any application really capture who a person is?

I watch them prepare for their decision days, and I see both strength and vulnerability. They're trying so hard to be ready for whatever comes, telling each other that they're young, that they have their whole lives ahead of them, that where they go to college won't define them.

And maybe that's the real lesson I'm learning before I even start my own applications. Maybe the point isn't about getting into a specific school. Maybe it's about what you become while trying – the resilience you build, the perspective you gain, the understanding that your worth isn't tied to a college's decision.

To the seniors sweating over their decisions right now: I see you. I see how hard you've worked. And even though I'm not in your shoes yet, watching you go through this has taught me something valuable. You're showing us that it's possible to work incredibly hard for something while still maintaining your sense of self-worth, regardless of the outcome.

And to my fellow pre-seniors who are watching this unfold with me: maybe we can learn from what we're seeing. Maybe we can find a way to approach our turn at this with both determination and perspective. To work hard without losing ourselves. To care about our futures without letting college admissions define them.

Because one thing's becoming clear as I watch this process unfold: the college you get into might shape your next four years, but how you handle the journey there – that's what shapes who you become.

So while I prepare for my own turn at this crazy race, I'm trying to hold onto these realizations. To remember that wherever I end up, it's the person I become along the way that really matters.

And maybe, just maybe, that's the real win – not the name on the acceptance letter.

Strange how the memory stays so clear, Like frost on winter glass while autumn's leaves cascade and disappear.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Stars fade, galaxies drift in silent divide,
The universe marches, indifferent and wide.
In this vast expanse, we might lose our way,
But hold this moment, let it not stray.

For here and now, a fleeting glance,
A singular dance in the cosmic expanse.
Remember this breath, this heartbeat's spark,
In the endless night, our fleeting mark.