My little high school in Queens taught me many things — how to be resourceful and opportunistic, how to squeeze your way into rooms not meant to hold you, how to stand your ground and stand up for others —  but perhaps most importantly, it taught me grit. It taught me to haul myself out the door at 6 a.m. in the morning for the hour-long commute to get to my zero period (yes, zero period) lab section. It taught me to buckle down on the sixth floor robotics lab until nearly midnight in the weeks prior to competition season. It taught me to come to terms with failing, again and again, until I succeeded. It taught me that when your back is against the wall, you are your own second line of defense, and you will see yourself through. 

My parents laugh, sometimes, when I’m back for break and say how much I missed Queens. Palo Alto is “paradisical” to an outsider, in my dad’s words as he drove me back home from the airport this Thanksgiving. What could there be to miss about streets where a breath of fresh air is often laced with the scent of cigarettes, where litter covers sidewalks and dodging suspicious puddles in subway stations becomes second nature? 

But for all their complaints about how unsafe and unsanitary the city can be, I know my parents love it too — the strange comfort that comes with independence and anonymity, the unity that’s born of the collective hustle, the rugged strength you build over the years. In the city, you have to work to carve out rhythm in your life, and in turn, you build a characteristic streak of self-respect that your friends will laughingly identify as what makes you a “New Yorker.”  

I know that when my parents laugh in disbelief, they’re thinking of the stark environmental contrast between our urban, chilly part of Queens and my beautifully-maintained, sunny Stanford campus, but I privately also echo their sentiments when I think back to my high school experience. A chokehold of expectation and pressure, internal and external, subtly pitting students against one another and pushing them relentlessly towards achievement — doing everything and more, if only to be seen as average beside the next qualified candidate. This, of course, is a rather “tl;dr” synopsis, with several positive highlights and aspects of my experience omitted, but it was enough of a reality that I, too, often question: how could I so dearly miss a place I associate with such a stressful time in my life? 

Whenever I’m driving back home from the airport, I often catch sight of the buses I used to take to and from high school. When I moved to New York almost six years ago, the fifth state I’d lived in in 14 years, it was taking public transportation that made me feel oddly comforted as a wary kid from the suburbs of Arizona. Never before had I been surrounded so wholly by difference that difference became unworthy of a second glance. My hijab did not make me more of an outsider than another’s kippah. No family in my train car spoke the same language. I could step off the bus into Flushing Main Street or Jackson Heights and feel as though I’d been transported abroad, with all the store signs in Mandarin or Bengali and shoppers haggling prices in a way that fondly reminded me of my aunts. This is what I miss, and what gives me such a strong sense of belonging and comfort when I come back home. 

In my high school’s Ephebic Oath, which students recite every year during the school’s Founders’ Day tradition, there is a line that always stood out to me — “I shall never bring disgrace to my city, nor shall I ever desert my comrades in the ranks.” The last part — to never desert my comrades in the ranks — is what would snag my attention each time I read it. As a Muslim, I grew up learning that one of the major sins in Islam is, with the exception of strategic retreat, to flee from the battlefield — to turn tail, as the odds stack against you; to abandon post, as your brothers and sisters stand firm despite their fear. Each time I read the Ephebic Oath, I would think of how fleeing from the battlefield and deserting one’s comrades in the ranks are both, in a literal or metaphorical interpretation, concepts of the same essence. 

To me, being within the ranks meant many things. It meant being another high schooler in New York City; it meant recognizing that to succeed, you had to work hard, compete, count on yourself, but cheer along your peers just as fiercely. It meant being another commuter on the 6:30 a.m. F train; it meant recognizing the privilege of discomfort for the purpose of education, and pushing down the complaints that rose easily to your tongue. Being within the ranks meant being a citizen of your city; it meant recognizing its faults and shortcomings, and doing your part to leave your city greater than you found it. It meant being critical of the institutions you were a part of and benefitted from, while holding love and pride for your community.  

Desertion of the ranks, therefore, would be an usurpation of what it means to be a citizen and student. And as a citizen and student, the obstacles and struggles you face are your metaphorical battlefields; your victories, losses, successes and defeats the spoils of war. 

Here at Stanford, being within the ranks looks rather different, but the sentiment is the same. The battlefields I find myself within look different, too, and the way I face them is ever-shifting. So now, far from Queens but holding the lessons I’ve learned close, when I think of what it means to flee from the battlefield, I think of the internal battles, those of the self and soul (in Arabic, the nafs) — battles of pathfinding, morality, purpose. I think of the day-to-day battles — the problem sets that make you question whether your acceptance to Stanford was a fluke, the late-night study hours that leave you with a raging headache and a sense of defeat, the exams that seem to mock your relentless efforts. I think of the way that our school has a tendency to be a “pressure cooker,” as my chaplain once said, recognized only by those inside it, and I think of how laughable these problems must seem to someone whose reality is so far from yours that these issues would be privileges. I laugh sometimes, too. 

Sometimes, your battlefield is your mind. Sometimes it is your external circumstances. Sometimes it is both, or none, or more. All the time, it is yours to face. So, I tell myself — fight, alone or alongside. Do not flee from your battlefield; do not abandon your comrades in the ranks; do not abandon your commitment to yourself and your mission. Do not let go of your moral code in the face of uncertainty, and do not allow yourself to be thrown permanently off course by failures. Fight — stumble, fall and rise again — and build strength enough to see yourself to the finish line.