The theme of individualism plays an important role Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself,” but Whitman also discusses the importance of harmonizing your own identity with the identity of others. He illustrates this point in the very first verse with the line, “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Deciding which college to attend was not only a deeply personal time but also encompassed my family and friends. I knew I wanted to stay close to home and close to the city since I viewed both as extensions of one another. I figured commuting would not be the highlight of my day, but the environment of a subway car seemed to represent a microcosm of the city, which Whitman describes in section 26 with the lines, “I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following / Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night.” Therefore, step one was complete.

When it came to choosing my area of study, however, I found myself overwhelmed with options. I was unsure of what I wanted to major in, which made it difficult to narrow down my college search. I knew Baruch was a revered college and I was exploring the idea of studying business. So I took the plunge and entered Baruch with Whitman’s philosophy that “there was never any more inception than there is now.” Discovering my passion for marketing later on made me realize I first needed to go down the path of being unsure in order to find my calling. Just as Whitman says in section 30, “All truths wait in all things / They neither hasten their delivery nor resists it.” My decision to go to Baruch and to major in marketing came from internal as well as external forces, showing that it took meeting and interacting with others to help me figure out what I wanted. However, my journey both at Baruch and in life has just begun and, as Whitman puts it in section 51, I am “proceed[ing] to fill my next fold of the future.”