"Make a Wish it's 11:11"

"Make a wish, it's 11:11." This is something I say nearly four out of seven days a week. I wouldn't call myself a superstitious person, but something about 11:11 has me closing my eyes, making a wish, and hoping so badly it will come true.

I started doing this my sophomore year of high school. I made wishes like I hope to do well on my English essay, I hope I play well in my volleyball game tonight, I hope Lauren and I have a fun time at our sleepover on Friday. I would spam my mind with wishes, text my friends to make a wish, and count down the seconds they had left. We would joke about what our wishes were, but every 11:11 follower knows you can't talk about your wish or it won't come true. Looking back at those wishes now, they were meaningful in the moment, but at a larger scale, nothing much.

Getting into my senior year of high school my wishes became a lot more serious. I hope this college likes my common app. I hope my extracurriculars are appealing enough. I hope I get into the University of Miami. I hope I get into the University of Miami. I hope I get into the University of Miami. That was my wish on repeat once I applied Early Decision 2 and my mind was set. Lo and behold, my wish came true on February 25, 2022, and in that moment I truly believed it worked.

So off I went with a whole new set of wishes. I hope I find the perfect roommate. I hope we get along. I hope I find a group of friends. And at first, it felt like the wishes were working. I found my dream roommate, someone exactly like me. We did everything together, and she felt like the foundation I needed to make college feel like home. But after fall break, she came back with the news she was leaving Miami and transferring the following semester. So I found a new roommate, someone I had grown close to that same semester, and she became my best friend too. Lo and behold, she also transferred. Losing that foundation twice in one year was hard in a way I hadn't expected. In my opinion, friends are the hardest part of college, building a community around yourself that makes you feel at home, and mine kept leaving. I remember feeling like college wasn't what everyone had made it out to be, like I had been sold a version of it that didn't match my reality. I kept wishing anyway.

Freshman spring I rushed a sorority, and while it didn't click overnight, it was the best decision I ever made. Slowly, semester by semester, something started to shift. By junior year it finally felt familiar in the way that only the best friendships do, the kind where you feel safe enough to just be yourself. It reminded me of my friends from home, the ones I had known forever. I wasn't replacing them, but I was building something that felt just as real, and just as permanent.

Now I am a senior and my wishes at Miami have all come true. I have the most incredible group of friends. I love this city. I love my life here and everything this school has given me. But now I am supposed to take all of it and go, and the honest truth is I have no idea where I am going. Everyone asks the same question this semester: Sophia, what are you doing after graduation? And I never have a clean answer. The job search is hard. Networking is hard. Getting my resume into the right hands is hard. All I know is that I want to be in a big city, somewhere new, somewhere that challenges me. But what that looks like, when it will come together, and what will enter my life next, I genuinely do not know yet.

What 11:11 has taught me is that the wish isn't the destination. It's just the thing that keeps you moving toward it.