A year ago I was still deciding which documents to authenticate first. Now I have a semester of coursework behind me, a research direction that’s shifted twice since my original proposal, and a version of myself that’s noticeably more comfortable being the only Filipino in a room than I was when I landed. I wanted to write down what I’d actually tell that version of myself from a year ago, before the memory of not-knowing fades into hindsight.

First: your research proposal is allowed to change. I treated my original proposal like a contract I’d signed in blood, and spent more energy than necessary feeling guilty when my actual interests drifted somewhere adjacent to it after my first semester of coursework. Every academic I’ve since talked to says the same thing — the proposal gets you in the door; the work you actually do once you’re there is allowed to evolve as you learn more.

Second: the comparison spiral is not worth it. I spent my first few months quietly measuring myself against classmates who seemed to have language skills, research experience, or plain confidence I didn’t have yet. What I couldn’t see, at the time, was that most of them were doing the exact same thing about someone else. Nobody arrives fully formed. Everyone is mid-adjustment, all the time — some people are just better at hiding it.

Third: ask for help earlier than feels comfortable. Whether it was a confusing university form, a research direction I was stuck on, or just a bad week, I defaulted to trying to push through alone for far longer than made sense, out of some instinct that asking meant I wasn’t cut out for this. Every time I finally did ask — a professor, an academic advisor, a fellow scholar — the problem got smaller faster than my pride wanted to admit.

If you’re just starting this process, or just landed somewhere new and unfamiliar: it gets less disorienting, faster than you think, and slower than you’d like, both at once. Keep going. A year from now you’ll be writing your own version of this list.