Careening towards adulthood in a Delta 737
I remember two key things about my first airplane ride.
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I remember two key things about my first airplane ride.
Organization isn’t easy.
A few months ago, I discovered an old photo featuring myself sporting a … well, “memorable” bowl cut.
The Bhut Jolokia. The U-morok. The Red Naga. Different titles for the same three-inch-long maelstrom of pain — the ghost chili pepper. Each fiery red husk contains over one million Scoville heat units. Only those with exceptional decision-making skills would try one — scientific fact.
It’s the first month and first semester of a new year! The 21st century is officially 19-years-old, and I’m still the same imperfect individual I’ve always been. Nice! Everything seems to be in order.
I love the mountains.
The first Halloween I can actually remember, my parents dressed me as a lion.
I’ve always loved the presence of nature on Grounds. From the green fields to the docile squirrels and the endless trees, few college campuses can claim to be as calming. With exams increasing and stress on the rise, I’ve found myself appreciating the environment even more than usual. Last week, I read that exposure to nature can even decrease levels of stress and boost overall mental health, which I thought made perfect sense. After all, what part of the University’s natural environment could be stressful?
People are different. We are born different and raised differently by different parents into different lives and different cultures. In college especially, it seems people are always trying to amplify their differences to stand out — or hide them to fit in. With so many floating types of people, I often struggle gauging someone’s personality. I find myself wondering if people have hidden motives — and wishing there was some simple test to determine who someone really was.
At the end of my first year, I said goodbye to a close group of friends knowing I might never see them again. We all still liked each other, but we were heading towards different apartments, different majors and different lives. I could feel my friends reaching out with their goodbyes — saying things like “we’ll still see each other” and “nobody’s moving too far away” — trying to grasp tenuous connections of hope for the coming year. Even still, in those last hours before summer, our roads were diverging, and with only one afternoon left as first years, I felt the future bearing down on me. With uncertainty filling our lives, an often-quiet friend spoke up. In six brilliant words, he turned the looming tornado of the future into a distant breeze with words which still ring in my mind.
My first semester, I took astronomy for one reason and one reason only — it looked easy. Of course, you aren’t supposed to take a college class because it looks easy. You’re supposed to take one because it’s challenging or thought-provoking or will help you succeed. Science classes have never been my forte, however, and I was already worried about managing all the courses on my schedule. So — though I knew I’d be betraying the holy academic spirit — I took the easiest astronomy seminar I could find. As it turned out, astronomy was fascinating and, as I expected, not particularly difficult. However, even though the class was exactly what I was hoping for, I started to feel anxious every time I entered the lecture hall. The more the pressures of college started to build, the more I feared I wasn’t in a difficult enough course. Somehow, by taking an easy science credit for one semester, I thought I would become unprepared for all future trials. I started to feel the weight of the “real world” bearing down on me. Adulthood was coming — and I wasn’t ready. The idea that we are all going to be thrown into a maelstrom of jobs and taxes in a few years is a hard one to escape from. After all, the way education is structured makes us think in those terms. In middle school, we’re warned that high school is coming, and unless we study now we’ll be left behind. Then, in high school, we hear about how if we don’t take the hardest AP classes, we’ll never succeed in college. Now here we are at a prestigious university with the mythical adult realm finally hurtling towards us. And once again, we’re led to think our classes and choice of major will decide our destiny. So, by taking astronomy, I felt like I was betraying my own future. I think this idea of difficulty producing success is what makes summer internships so stressful. Just like with classes, it seems as if we should be undergoing the hardest internships possible. Adulthood will come rushing in soon, and unless we work hard now, we won’t stay afloat. At the same time, of course, this way of thinking makes it seem like our few remaining summer breaks will be the last breaks we ever have. And nobody wants to work during their time off. Just like with classes, however, we feel like if we aren’t working a difficult position we don’t enjoy, we’re not going to succeed in the future. Guilty thoughts plague our down-time, and these regretful feelings can quickly ruin our summers. This summer, I’m writing articles for Preservation Virginia, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. So far, it’s been both fascinating and not particularly difficult work. Much like my astronomy class, however, I still feel like I’m a mistake. Even though I’m doing something interesting and gratifying, I’m still under the impression I should be doing something more taxing. I don’t have any of the interests or skills needed to become a doctor, yet multiple times over the summer I’ve thought about interning at a hospital. After all, shouldn’t I be putting challenge at the forefront? Shouldn’t I be pursuing the highest achievement I can, regardless of whether or not it makes me miserable? Whenever I become overwhelmed by thoughts like these, I try to think back to astronomy. My first day of class, my professor said something which struck me as odd.
Before I started my first year here, the idea of college was almost mythical. Every parent, grandparent, teacher and graduation speaker had something different to say about the experience. I heard about how much harder it is, how much I’d learn, how it would change my life forever. After a while, I started to see college as comparable to falling into a black hole of adulthood leading to a vast and staggering assortment of new experiences and difficulties. My old self would be burned away and replaced by a paragon of new maturity. The adolescent would die, and the adult would rise. Maybe a puff of smoke would be involved, too — who was to say. Orientation didn’t do much to amend my somewhat outlandish expectations. Speech after speech on the life-redefining nature of the next four years caused my mental image of college to grow more and more extreme. By the time first semester began, my eagerness to experience all the things I’d been hearing about was at an all-time high. In fact, I felt so certain life-changing moments would occur any second during my first few weeks here that I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on right in front of me.
Learning from adversity is an archetypal part of the college experience. As graduation speaker after graduation speaker will tell you, challenges are more than just setbacks. They are lessons to be learned and obstacles to strengthen our character and ability. Hurdles we will one day share with our grandchildren when asked how we achieved such resounding success. Considering the sheer number of speeches on the subject, you’d think any form of bad luck is really just a perfect opportunity in disguise — a blessing from the universe to help you blossom into a healthier, more experienced version of yourself.
Fear is logical. The world is full of danger, and a raw instinct to avoid biological and environment perils is crucial to our continued circadian survival.
You’re exhausted, it’s 3 a.m. and you have a midterm tomorrow. So why hasn’t your stupid body fallen asleep yet?
When I was in elementary school, there was something almost magical about getting sick. Instead of thinking rationally, I saw every fever and cough as a glorious opportunity to miss school — bestowed upon me by some angel of viral infection. Sure, I was occasionally too sick to really enjoy my time off, but to my six-year-old brain, almost any discomfort was worth it. After all, at the time, the entire scope of my existence essentially consisted of school, home and Toys "R" Us, and hierarchically, “school” dwelt at the bottom of that list.
A few days ago, I saw another student crying in Gilmer Hall. I was sitting on the bench outside my psychology lecture hall, going over the material I was supposed to have finished reading the night before. I arrived a few minutes earlier than I meant to, so the class before mine was still in session. A stranger slumped beside me, and his head pressed into his hands. When he lifted up his head to look at the clock, I realized he had been crying.
When I first came to the University, nothing was more awkward than starting conversations with new people. Now, however, after making friends that I speak with regularly, the most awkward part of a conversation has become — ironically — ending them.
Few things are more painful than finals. From the cramming to the all-nighters to the last-minute realizations you forgot to study entire chapters — exams always find a way to make life miserable. The moment the test is over, however, all of that stress disappears for a single, sweet moment. The class is finished. All that studying is over, forever. You’ve done all you can.
Here is an artistic recreation of a picture I drew when I was six: