ahhhhh

In the final year of high school, we all smelled like milk. Teething on our pencil cases, our hair, nails, and wits frayed to the final point, shoulders deadened by the brutal beatings of too-heavy bookbags—this was it. For the very few and fortunate children of high-powered couples of finance, medicine, and law, and the offspring of the odd, sour-smelling, immigrant pair, this final year was our final stretch to college. To quote our counselors who enjoyed putting things in metaphors as much as possible, junior year was a marathon, and these beginning months were the final, short-lived race. To even consider running it, we needed willing knees propelled up to the maximum, shoelaces choked to submission, and above all, a fiercely vicious and bloody hunger for an acceptance letter, the physical proof of our future's security. No matter how quietly we went about it, pretending it was the last thing on our minds, the matter was time and soul-sucking. After all, everyone knew it concluded how the rest of your life would play out.

I decided that I would apply to the University of Chicago because it prided itself on making you think. And I also met a lawyer who had a tattoo of the school’s motto on the back of her neck, and I, oblivious in high school, thought it was a sure sign that the school and I were meant to be—cuz WOW she really loved it. This was the length of my research-- decided that one was enough and good so I did not bother to really think about the rest. Also, it was really far away from home, which was another plus in my book: it would give me the independence and individuality that I needed to grow. Just throw myself in the wild and I’ll figure it out, nibbling on acorns and tree bark that would feed and harden my character.

And, of course, with this horror story of a college application process  (neck tattoo lawyer, zero thought on what kind of professionals these schools churned out, zero consideration of what I might want to do as I grow older, the perks of writing only three essays for the entire college application process, being done in December) I was most definitely thrown in the wild. Stunned, stumbling around in the solemn Joseph Regenstein library in my X-Large wolf shirt, ratty sweatpants, long socks, and slides, thinking I looked cool, smelling like all-nighters and stale coffee, I did not know what I was doing in college or what I had set myself up for. Who knew that the UChicago Econ degree was well-respected and who knew that every time you lost your ID at a sweaty sad horny frat party you would have to pay $20 for a new one? Was the motto of the school really “Where fun goes to die”? Was that not a sarcastic little joke shared and humored amongst the students??? 

My first year of college was memorably monotonous—many nights spent on the first floor, poring over a sociology book in a hurry to comprehend the systematic workings of human societies, even though I failed to even understand why I liked to eat pasta on Tuesdays but never on Thursdays, and why I cried at nature documentaries. I cycled through repetitive talks and doubly helpful and horrifying conversations with upperclassmen and advisors about my major and my future and “what really matters”. It was full of worries about my personhood and my future, full of worries about what I liked and enjoyed, the unattractive, gross mystery of it all. I begged for it to be solved immediately.

I’m still worrying—worrying, but not trying to blow it up too much. Learning that, as zen and Gwyneth Paltrow as it sounds, closing my eyes and breathing in deeply, very deeply, with thought and consideration and patience, retrieves the many thoughts bouncing and zooming around my head right before I feel like I will implode and shatter into pieces that cannot be found and glued back. It doesn’t mean that I sit around doing nothing, waiting for the answers to come to me—in fact, I should be running around doing everything, searching and exploring to get closer and closer to those answers—but there is no need to imagine bleak and desolate futures, painting lovely images of my failures. These are soothing pictures of mediocrity, ones that are too easy to expect. Dreaming big is hard and difficult to reconcile but better than those pictures, but for me to dream big I’ve got to do big; slowly, slowly, with a certain level of too-bright hopefulness and an eager, undying resolve. 

Writing on here is the start of it all.