“It’s hard being a Bowdoin student.”

Sometimes you hear something so absolutely wrong that in the shadow of its falsehood an image of the truth becomes apparent. Sitting in the back of some inane mandatory training session (perhaps during Sophomore Bootcamp), listening to the words of one of our many senior vice presidents, I had one such experience. I heard those words over a year ago and had hoped I would forget them, but no such blank bliss came to me. In my attempts to forget, I have determined a few things: that Bowdoin is inherently easy, that many Bowdoin students find it difficult and that our difficulty is entirely self-imposed. My hope is that by realizing the last part, we can choose our difficulties with more acuity and, along the way, gain a better appreciation for the work done to make Bowdoin easy.

I’m not one to let an assertion stand without any evidence, so here are a few facts. Our graduation rate hovers between 92 and 96 percent, which means that roughly the same percentage of Bowdoin students fail to graduate as Americans report in polls their belief that lizard people run the world. The average GPA at the school is unpublished by the registrar because the actual number would be embarrassingly high (if that’s not the case, please publish it), but we do know that the number of Book Award winners has gone from eight in 2003 to over 100 in recent years. The median grade is either an A- or an A. Academics aside, our every need is cared for: from the basics (food, water, shelter and healthcare) to the less basic (books and therapy) to the downright decadent (midnight snacks, ski trips and temporary petting zoos). In terms of basic survival, the median Bowdoin student struggles less than any king in human history.

If you’re still not convinced of the inherent ease of life at Bowdoin, I want you to imagine, for a moment, a perfectly lazy Bowdoin student. His goal is simple: to graduate with minimal effort. I believe (although I would like to be wrong) that this hypothetical man could get by with a mere hour per week of anything that could be construed as work. Through an astute selection of classes, even attendance requirements could be avoided. Writing would likely be done with an AI model of choice. His days would be spent lounging on the quad or in his dorm, and his nights in a drug-addled haze of vaguely entertaining short-form content. In other words, he’d be a perfectly reprehensible aristocrat. This man’s only saving grace is that he does not exist.

He would never get into Bowdoin, as to get here requires a certain degree of ambition. Bowdoin is hard because we seek out difficulty. Roughly half the school is varsity athletes despite no scholarship incentivizing their participation, and even our most popular club sport (rowing) is a gloriously masochistic endeavor. Most of us spend our summers running some rat race or another. Some people even major in physics. For many, the life of a Bowdoin student is indeed hard.

We ought not to see it that way. When it’s 2 a.m. and you’re sitting in Smith Union  wrapping up a particularly nasty p-set or lengthy essay, remember that you did it to yourself. It could have been easy. The difficulty is not a punishment but a privilege. Indeed, I think it’s the most extraordinary privilege one can have. We possess here the ability to choose our challenges, and in doing so, to forge ourselves into the people we want to become. Beyond that, we are blessed with mentors—professors, coaches and our peers—who can guide us in that journey.

I suppose that’s why I was so disturbed when I was told that “it’s hard being a Bowdoin student.” Our self pity ought not be officially sanctioned. It takes a sense of agency out of the equation. Difficulty is not the base state here; it is a choice. If your choice is not producing the desired results, then change the difficulty. Being a Bowdoin student is easy, and hundreds of people work to make it so. We should relish the fact that here we can choose our challenges—this will never again be the case.

Sam Lieman is a member of the Class of 2027.