Somehow finals week is right
around the corner, and here I am writing instead of pretending to do the
horrifying homework in front of me. The amount of work I have to do in the next
nine days is so daunting I can do nothing other than think about all things apart from school. The ever-feared Organic Chemistry is almost over, terribly unnecessary
Physics is almost complete, and I am about halfway done with my undergraduate
degree. Life is flashing before my eyes, and contrary to what you would think,
I am fully aware of it. Weeks feel like days, and months feel like weeks. How
disproportionate, right?
It seems the more work I have to do, my brain gets
exponentially more unorganized. My writing however gets more organized. Just
kidding, good luck following my train of thought.
Usually I procrastinate like
a boss and then right at the end I pull it together. I strangely pride myself
in sliding by with impressive grades for the situation I got myself into, and swearing
I’ll do it different next semester. However after the year of academic hell
I’ve been running through, I’m beginning to doubt I have it in me to pull it
all together. That takes such a push of effort, and I’m running out of steam,
fast. Part of me is so used to having tremendous piles of homework looming over
my head that it no longer instills the drive it once did. There is no test, no
paper, and no part of an undergraduate degree that could scare me into working
hard earlier than I have to. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. What
doesn’t make you drop out makes you smarter? I wish.
In the midst of the
craziness of ending the school year, I have done the unthinkable, and gotten
myself into a relationship. That word made me cringe for a long time. A few of
the texts that have been lighting up my phone since this said relationship went
on Facebook include little gems like, “The girl who could not be tied down is
now Facebook official?? I guess he really is special”. I laughed over text and
told the sender of that he couldn’t be that surprised; he was really that
shocked.
Hopefully that successfully
conveys how most of my friends reacted to my new relationship. I have run from
commitment for months, enjoying being carefree and reporting to no one. Underneath
my genuine carefree attitude that carried on for months, an internal wrestle
match started, in which I began to desire normal and stable, but enjoyed the
strength of being a woman in a man’s game of not wanting commitment.
Ever so quickly, this one
snuck up on me. Before I could even surprise myself, I surprised everyone else with
a real relationship. This one I want to do right, hopefully with more success
than doing my homework next semester. I’m taking my lessons in honesty and in
breaking hearts, and attempting some wisdom ahead of time. But let’s be real, I
attempt a lot of things. Lady luck hates me.
A while ago I hinted at a
post about about learning to surf. It has also been six weeks since my last
post. In other words, life has been out of hand and I haven’t been writing.
What I’m coming to realize is that that also means I’m not processing as much.
The past six weeks have been a lull in schoolwork and a surge of life. I have
embraced this few week break from the hammer of homework open heartedly, living
it up with the most free time I’ve had since freshman year. Life comes in waves
like this. Unfortunately, one can never be prepared for the worst ones.
As with life, one can only
be so prepared for something as big and unpredictable as the ocean. Surfing
puts you right out in the middle of that unfamiliarity, with sets of waves
often large enough to knock you under water for what seems like hours. The
biggest obstacle in learning to surf for me was the waves themselves. The first
time I went in the water, I was absolutely terrified of these four-foot waves
that I couldn’t read at all. Four feet doesn’t sound too bad, right? Wrong.
When you’re lying down on a board, four-feet looms over your head like a manager on a power trip.
I couldn’t paddle away from them, I couldn’t stop them, and for that first
hour, nowhere felt safe. I spent at least the first two weeks out in the water
just letting the waves roll under me, figuring out when they were about to
crash on my head, and when I was relatively safe. Surfing scared me more than
anything I’d ever done, so I had to keep doing it. I was strangely fearful of
looking back and knowing I was too scared to do something well.
I still can’t really surf,
but I try to surf a few times a week. The waves are no longer terrifying, and
instead relaxing and humbling. They are out of my control and I can only know
so much about them. Learning to surf has taught me two important lessons:
1. Face your fears.
There is no feeling better than conquering something that had the potential to
limit you forever.
2.
Life is like
waves; you can only prepare yourself to an extent. Learn what you can, let them
roll under you when they’re too big, and don’t take your eyes off of what is to
come.
All in all: Procrastination
leads to revelation, surprises are fun (never let predictable be in your
self-description), and waves are incredible.
