Before this year, I could not remember the last time I took a “me day.” Sure, I had locked myself in my room and watched The Little Mermaid, but I hadn’t taken these breaks when I was already at my breaking point. So, this March, I might it a point to finally break out of my shell and go off on an adventure. I quickly threw on pants and a sweater, taking a bus to St. John’s but not knowing what exactly it was I planned on doing. As I walked around the town, I breathed in the cool air and exhaled my first sigh of relief in months. I was not surrounded by books or papers, but instead outside, wandering around the park and reading in a coffee shop; I was completely relaxed. As the sun set over the bridge, I began to realize just how little I valued myself. This sunset, this beauty, could not be found on paper, and as it turns out, neither could my happiness.
My first two years of college were filled with extreme highs and lows. On the one hand, I was filled with knowledge, constantly challenged in the classroom by my peers and professors, and I thrived. I had never achieved better grades or felt more encouraged to explore my interests and opinions, and for this, I am grateful. Among the educational bounds I took and the close friends I began to gain was a dark side to education that began to rear its head. For every hour of classes, I spent three pouring over books, locking myself away from people and from help. I felt so much pressure to succeed, to excel, that I pushed myself to a point that I stopped being able to hold food down and would have anxiety attacks every night. Still, I was addicted to this profitable pain, begging for classes to overwhelm me to the point where I would live simply off of adrenaline.
Looking back, I think there is a part of me that misses the brutality and competition of it all. Staying up all night, drinking four large coffees a day to get that A back on a paper was exhilarating, but it was dark. During those two years, I learned a lot about limits and about myself. There were moments when I surrounded myself with people who would take 21 credits at a time and participate in a sport and four clubs, yet I struggled with a normal load. I pushed myself to a brink, and when I finally was shaking so bad I couldn’t write my name, I began to reassess my surroundings.
It was during this stressful period that I took that day away. As I stepped away from the school, the wind felt almost as if it had lifted the burdens from my back, and the deep breath allowed me to taste the refreshing dew that had gathered on the grass below me. There was nothing like it. I stood there, in St. John’s, for over two hours just watching it all pass around me. The water slowly lapping at the dock, the couple lounging on the blanket near me, and the woman lost in her own train of thought as her dog sporadically led her along. In that moment, I said goodbye to my university and focused on myself, yet I barely knew myself after this long.
During this day, I focused on introspection. The nearly $60,000 tuition of my university had left me soulless. I did not know what I was interested in or even passionate about, but instead was running through the motions of someone just trying to get by and get good grades. In deep thought, I finally accepted that no amount of education or grades could ever satisfy me; this thirst I felt wouldn’t be satisfied. So, instead, I began to consider having fun. I thought about all the books I tore through about film history, trivia, and production; adoption policy; my strange obsession with the study of family values and systems. All the things in classes and in my personal life that made me almost giddy when I thought of them began to become options in life. I began to see that life should be about the little things that bring you happiness instead of what may ultimately destroy your soul, but bring you great success.
As I’ve finished my first term at Portland State, I can’t help but be thankful for my first two years at my previous university and that day in the park. I recently finished with a 4.0, have a job I love, and am finally pursuing film and family studies, not for duty, but for love. I can count on one hand the number of panic attacks I have suffered in the past ten weeks; I couldn’t even do that for one week previously. I still struggle to avoid becoming addicted to stress, but the days I have spent reading entire books and spending hours by myself in the art museum prove far more fulfilling than anything school has to offer me. There are people out there much like myself, people who would give up everything to get the grades or the jobs, but I must warn you, you will not find happiness there. Perhaps in a week or ten years, you’ll wake up one morning and realize you’ve become The Walking Dead. You won’t know when or where it will happen, but I can promise, if you put success before passion, you will never find happiness, and with only one life to live, that is a real shame. So, thank you, to the university that broke me. I lost my soul, but I gained friends and knowledge to last a lifetime, just not in the way you taught me to find it. As it turns out, learning to be passionate and happy really is a walk in the park.
