“College is meant to break you,” my professor began in class one day. “Your diploma is a certification of the fact that your spirit has been broken.” My classmate and I exchanged looks. This professor was notorious for his unconventional lectures on philosophy, but we didn’t exactly appreciate this kind of sermon whilst neck-deep in academic requirements, not to mention that we were just a few months away from graduation.

I ignored this view for several weeks. After all, how could college be anything but the years I flourished the most thus far? It was in a university setting where I was able to identify my strengths and shortcomings; where I was regularly exposed to different people and perspectives; where I learned of wonder and rigor, especially when one loves; where I best made sense of my faith, among countless other self-discoveries.

Yet the idea and its implications demanded attention—through the weeks they lingered on at the back of my mind and occasionally I found myself face-to-face with the thought. And now, with the day that will mark the end of four years set to happen merely four weeks from now, it finally seems that there is some truth to what my professor said all those months back.

Looking back, my college narrative was no doubt punctuated by miserable moments. It was in Ateneo where I learned just how severely I could disappoint—hell, even hurt—myself and other people; where I lost friendships I thought would last for a lifetime; where I compromised health and relationships for the sake of some project or grade. It was in college where I let the stress and pressure of expectations, both internal and imposed, get to me on a day-to-day basis. And the days added up to months and years.

Looking back, my freshman self had a vision of the world that I can now only barely recognize. Progressively and systematically, each hope and dream I once harbored had to be conclusively buried for me to be where I am now. Call it “growing up,” call it “getting real,” the obvious point is, I’ve changed a lot. And yet in many ways I’m still the same person. What allows me to say that the “I” I was before is still the “I” I am now?

If anything, I’ve learned that questions like these have no easy answers. And that’s okay. In the map of my mind, with each corner of certainty unsettled came feelings of lostness through the years—though along with this movement, always, was a sense of liberation.

There is a common saying that goes along the lines of, “You need to be broken first before you can be made whole.” I know what it means. But I don’t understand it. It makes sense in my mind, yet I don’t see it in my life just yet. I am far from whole. I wouldn’t be writing this if I had no loose ends to settle, no unsolved riddles to reckon with. I know it’s a matter of picking up the pieces—that cosmos began from chaos—but perhaps such an ordering will take much more than four years, if not a lifetime of trying.

Of course college breaks its students—of course I was broken multiple times in a span of four years. And I don’t want to dwell on or glamorize my brokenness. But neither do I want to say that it was always for the best, or that I have definitively learned from all of my mistakes.

No matter how we choose to tell them, the cracks in our stories will always be there. My only hope is that these cracks will reveal, more than conceal, the rich nuances of our narratives.