It’s not always easy to get a fresh start. How do you completely rid of everything up until this point? Well, last week, I took my laptop into the shop for wifi connectivity issues, and today I have a brand new hard drive. How we got to replacing my hard drive without saving any of my data is a different and arduous story, but today we are talking about getting fresh starts. I think saying goodbye to seven years of photos, music, documents of all kinds, as well as high school homework assignments and long lost contacts and conversations qualifies as a very fresh start.

It’s strange opening a familiar aluminum shell but knowing that all the insides are foreign. Having to choose my country, language, and timezone made it feel like I actually had purchased something brand new. In the back of my mind I know that there are some things that I have lost, that will come to haunt me when I need them. But for now, it’s almost peaceful. My desktop is completely empty - no icons or loose documents. Just a breathtaking wonderfully high resolution picture of Yosemite at sunset. There is nothing to hide.

If you ever feel like you need a fresh start, I highly recommend replacing your hard drive or resetting your old laptop to factory settings. Maybe you should email yourself that one folder containing the only copies you have of your research project’s advisory panel board’s W9 forms so everyone can get paid, but besides that, erase everything. In all seriousness, it’s rare we ever get a clean slate - and it’s something that we all need more often.

In college, we learn infinitely more about ourselves and what makes us happy (or unhappy) than we could have ever imagined. There are things that we don’t want to remember and evidence of memories linger everywhere. Sometimes we don’t want to delete these memories. If when you did spring cleaning and really did throw out everything you said you would or intended to, you probably would not have much. It’s not easy to let go of the past but when you do, life goes on, and you are faster, newer, and your battery lasts longer with a single charge. So go now, throw out that old shirt you never wear, delete that photo that you said you would stop looking at, and look forward to a future with no chains, you owe yourself a fresh start.