My One Regret From College
I have only one real regret from my college days at the University of Oregon.
And no—it’s not what you think.
If you saw the cover image—the exaggerated, almost cartoonish caricature of Trump—you might assume this is a political confession. It isn’t. I didn’t even vote in college. That’s not the regret.
The regret is that I made the image at all.
Between 2016 and 2017, I was taking a digital art class where we had to create something new every week. One assignment, without much thought—honestly, without any thought—I sketched that caricature. It felt like a throwaway. A doodle. Something easy to get done and move on from.
It wasn’t driven by conviction. It wasn’t satire rooted in belief. At the time, I didn’t know much about Trump one way or the other. If anything, the image was an echo—something shaped by the tone, reactions, and conversations of the people around me. I absorbed it without realizing I had.
When the piece was printed and hung on the wall for critique, I remember feeling strangely detached from it. Like I was looking at something I hadn’t really made. I don’t remember what I said when it was my turn to explain it—only that whatever I said probably sounded more intentional than it actually was.
Because the truth is, there was no real thought behind it.
And that’s what bothers me now.
Not the drawing itself—but what it revealed.
That piece didn’t represent what I believed. It represented what I thought the people around me believed. And worse, I presented it as if it were my own perspective. Not out of malice, but out of carelessness. Out of not knowing the difference yet.
That’s the part I regret.
Because that moment—some throwaway assignment pinned to a classroom wall—quietly exposed something I hadn’t learned yet: how easy it is to mistake proximity for understanding. How easy it is to adopt a viewpoint without ever examining it.
That drawing is a snapshot of a version of me who hadn’t learned to think independently.
And I think that’s why it still sticks with me.