At last, the school year has come to an end. For many, this is a time to rejoice, throw away the textbooks, and find peace within long days at the beach with friends watching sunrises or implementing a strict regimen of chilling. Thoughts of exams, professors, and brutal classes slowly begin to fade away as we spend time recovering the essential elements of our life that we believe were taken away.
I write to you from a state of discomfort of letting go of this familiar stress that has permeated every fiber of my being. So, why would anyone in their right mind be unwilling to let go of such a thing, I ask you, as I desperately cling on the very feeling of desperation.
Forgetting, I think, has become the source of my stubborn head. Fear of forgetting, perhaps, the different feelings developed over the course of the past two semesters in the face of the challenges posed by academics, extracurriculars, and social circles that have culminated into resolve. This resolve I describe is not as much a desire to win over any specific battle, but rather the hope to be satisfied the next time around, and make some sort of measurable life progress.
Summer, I suddenly find, is the impenetrable barrier to doing just this. Going home, I will find all of the comforts of home readily available and waiting for me—a simple transition to a lifelong routine where I fear I will slip into my lifelong home self, as I will call it, all too easily. The acceptance of this home role is practically mindless, and is the reason it is all the scarier for me. It seems clearer to me now that this is the underlying reason behind the commonly overheard “oh yeah, first semester was so much harder than second semester”.
It was always clear that this transition was difficult because of transitioning back into the school mindset. But it now seems to me as though my entire college experience has been stunted as a result of this. I have spent the first semester undoing the internalization of this home role, rather than actually struggling to become reacquainted with academics as it seems at face value, although the two are linked in a sense.
I find myself wanting to maintain the rigor and uncertainty of trying to figure out what I am doing with the time that I have been given here. Sure, I haven’t forgotten the studies I have chosen for myself and the potential jobs they will present me in the future, however I am (perhaps too) hopeful that there is more learning to do about myself and the world that will come from embracing this uncertainty and finding, or rather creating, my role within and beyond the same four blocks we walk around here on Foggy Bottom on a daily basis.
Perhaps you are reading the ramblings of a madman, and I was never in my right mind to begin with. Perhaps this recovery period is essential to the development of strong personhood. Perhaps an onslaught of stress is quite counterproductive to achieving this.
For now, I sit here writing to you with my resolve hanging by a thread, hoping that time will tell.
