Dear world. I'm really stressed. I actually miss school right now. I miss spending three hours sitting in silence near my rock in the chemistry library on Friday morning. I hate having to tell my friends that I will literally be gone for half of February. I feel like I spend the rest of my time at school doing schoolwork, eating or sleeping. I haven't been to lab and will not be back into lab until the week after next.
Earlier this week, I realized that the concept of new beginnings is so relevant for almost every part of life. I had a new beginning moving to a new town for high school. I had a new beginning when I started college. I'm about to finish this wonderful time at school for another new beginning in July when I move to wherever I go to graduate school. It seems like life is just a series of new beginnings, followed by a few years of dealing with those new situations.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about where my life is headed. I'm happy that I will be able to go to graduate school and pursue an awesome (if not occasionally frustrating) career of studying the things I love most (which is still unknown, I'm waiting for that moment of epiphany). I'm excited to meet new people (despite my introversion) but I'm not ready to welcome all this newness.
When I graduate high school, I was ready to run away, to find new spirits in a place more open than my dreaded overly white, overly Catholic hometown which I so often felt trapped in. I tell people my major is biochemistry. But the life and education I've led over the past 4 years has been much more than that. I've taken courses in Japanese, Mongol history, drawing, philosophy, modern fiction literature, virology, 2D design, queer theory, and creative writing. It has been a rich education. In every class, I've met someone to attach myself or whom attached themselves to me. In high school, I ran face forward towards the exit, but I feel like I've spent part of my college life run backwards to the exit. You know, when you are being chased and you turn briefly to look back and see what's behind you while continuing in the same direction? That's me. But instead of fearing what chases behind me, I'm so happy to look back and see what I've accomplished and all the love I've yielded over the years. It's beginning to settle in how bittersweet this ending will be and I'm still two months away. I want to leave as much of me there as well. I want to leave the best me to the people I love.
Speaking on the subject of new beginnings, I recently wrote a short story for my creative writing class that I really made me happy. We had critique workshop for it and I was shocked at the compliments it received and a lot of the criticism for it, I expected. I've really fallen in love with my two characters and I cannot wait to edit it. It's kind of a redemption story, about forgiving people. At this point, I'm rambling. But I have been up to a ton of things lately and this impending doom of the end of the school year has been creeping into my mind through most of it.
