People often say, “Your life is the sum of all of your experiences.” This is a lie.

As the autumnal breeze swept the pillared clouds across the Tuscaloosa sky Thursday afternoon, I found myself hunkered in the corner of the Ferguson Starbucks. I did not enjoy a pumpkin spice latte nor the indie-hipster playlist resounding above. My keyboard and my monitor were my companions.

In the climate of the day, in the stillness of the moment, I stared at the 8.5” by 11” page I had created, crafted and conquered over the past three autumns: my resume.

As I stretched margins, shifted fonts and swapped phrasings, my mind and chest flooded with wisps and whispers.

“Have I set myself apart enough from other applicants to jobs and grad schools?”

“Have I challenged myself and grown enough to justify my college experience?”

“Am I enough?”

It’s a slippery slope and a tumultuous tumble: the comparison game. A harmless glance at the accomplishments of others as a way of gauging your own success can escalate into a fundamental inquisition of your identity faster than a sopping-wet Georgia fan can exit Sanford Stadium.

Each of the four years in the culture of higher education seems implicitly poised to channel students in the right direction while incidentally stifling their development.

Freshman year: find yourself. Explore, risk, wander, seek, leap, dance, crash, sprint. Take it all in. You’ll never get the wonder back.

Sophomore year: align yourself. Narrow, deepen, study, contribute, climb, become, walk. Avoid the vanilla. You’ll never get the calmness back.

Junior year: refine yourself. Commit, persevere, own, create, overcome, concentrate, stride. Become a leader. You’ll never get the coming-of-age back.

Senior year: define yourself. Apply, weigh, accept, rest, bask, glory, run at whatever pace the day demands, but never stop moving. Be who you were born to be. You’ll never get the dominance back.

While these ideologies do not come printed in a pamphlet at Bama Bound, they appear to be the rat race made manifest at the University.

College provides the breeding ground for the oddest of deceptions. We rush between children and adults, students and masters, creatives and executives, yet we are all and none all at once.

This is a time for finding, aligning, refining and defining, but not of ourselves.

We should find passion in college, but accept that it’s okay if we don’t find a calling.

We should align with ideas and causes in college, but accept that it’s okay if we don’t align with something that recreates us.

We should refine our minds, hearts and souls in college, but accept that it’s okay if we don’t finish the process by the time we don a cap and gown.

We should define what we stand upon and stand against in college, but accept that it’s okay if we change our life plan along the way.

Amidst the overstimulating, breakneck race to determine and remember what we should be doing at the given moment, we begin to ask who we are at all. And when questions of identity surface, we necessarily ask ourselves in the most hushed of tones, “If I discover who I am, will it be enough?”

The 37,000 of us could fill 500 columns of 500 words in answering this question, but let’s settle one thing once and for all.

You are not defined by your resume. You are not defined by your accomplishments. You are not defined by your college experience.

So every once in a while, sit in the corner of Starbucks. Watch the fountain shimmer in the plaza. Soak in the lyrics of Hozier and the scent of dark roast cold-brew. Crumple the mental to-do list and the resume in your padfolio and rest in the fact that the work you are doing is enough.

Your life is not the sum total of anything. Your life is who you are, and who you are is enough.

Will Sorrell is a senior majoring in finance. His column runs biweekly.