Autumn Smiles

I crawled out of bed around noon, having been granted a brief reprieve from an E-Board meeting half an hour before. (It would have been the second week in a row I was late; I’m awful at getting out of bed on the weekends.) My suite was congregated in the common room and breakfast consisted of Earl Grey tea (with milk, always with milk) and mini bagels and cream cheese (I don’t understand how my roommate and I can go through a thing of cream cheese in a week. It’s disgusting and delicious at the same time).

“How was your night?”

The standard question that gets passed around every weekend, as the sober ones eye the bleary eye last night drunks, gauging how good the night was or not. Sometimes the question gets answered earlier in the morning, when the bathroom door gets slammed shut and the princess bucket comes out for use.

No unfortunate moments this weekend though, and despite our room being in a general state of filth, everyone in our suite was pretty content this morning. (Afternoon?).

I’m hiding away from the world at the local coffeeshop, surounded by coffee, tea, and good food. Huysman, Kant, and Hume surround me (hi first paper of the semester) and I just had a lovely coffee date with an alumnus who was home for alumni weekend. It was so nice to see everyone back–in a way, it feels “normal” that they’re all back. Weird, but also normal.

I got to show off my house for next year to her, and it was a beautiful blustery autumn day, the kind that sends leaves skipping off the trees in ecstasy. Everyone’s wearing scarves and big sweaters: it’s that kind of comfy day, where you want to cuddle up with a hot beverage and a good book. Or to sit and write looking out the window for a very long time. I might do both today. (I got hot cider earlier. It was delicious.) But back to the house. Just walking down the street–knowing that it was going to be my street next year–and getting to say, “Look, this is my house. This is where I’m living next year,” that was so wonderful. It was sunny and the leaves are all changing color, and I was in good company. It was just one of those days where you feel full of joy and you know everything is going to be alright in your world or awhile.

I didn’t get everything I wanted at the beginning of this semester, but looking back, I know why I didn’t. I needed a semester to slow down. I needed a semester for me, to be a better friend, a better person, a better student. To really take time and care about the things I was doing and the people I was with. Knowing this, and knowing I have three months to enjoy it, that makes me happy. I got to sit down with one of my favorite professors on Friday and talk with her about things. She asked me to TA for her next fall, and she told me she was so excited to get the chance to work with me. I remember walking out of her class last spring, and telling a friend: “If I could TA for her, I would be the happiest person.” And now I am. She’s one of those people that makes you smile, just by being around her. I’ll be a junior then (GULP), TA’ing and having my own house. LIKE WHAT. I do not want this year to rush away though. Sophomore year was hard, I heard, and it is. There’s been a lot of adjustment. It’s not the fairytale I’d have liked it to be, but I guess that’ s good for me. Disappointment reminds me I have to work hard(er) to get the things I really want. And everything happens for a reason. I don’t always get it when it happens, but eventually I see why.

Autumn is one of my favorite seasons. Lots of autumn smiles today.

 

Six Band-Aids, a Swollen Ankle, and Deep Sighs of Resignation Later….

I had just made it into the opening of clear ground, after running a long, wooded uphill, when my foot slid on a stone. My left ankle twisted sickeningly, and some instinct had me twist, slamming my hands into the dirt.

Rungh.

I hadn’t done that in a long time. My left ankle had also been giving me a lot of problems lately–a stiffness and achy feeling–so having it twist was not very reassuring. I was hoping I’d imagined the crack I’d heard. In the mean time though, I rolled over,  flat out on my back, and started laughing. This was so typical of high school Amy, but I hadn’t wiped out this spectacularly in awhile. My running buddy was beside me, asking me if I was okay, Jesus Amy, can you stand, do you think? I sat up, trying to catch my breath, noticing dirt-filled scrapes all down my right leg. Yuck.

I stood up gingerly, relieved to find I could stand and rest weight on that foot at all. Okay, not so bad.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I didn’t twist anything. It just sort of rolled, and I fell.”

As I started walking, I noticed something trickling down my leg.

“Oh, look. I’m bleeding.”

I really hadn’t fallen in awhile. I also have this morbid fascination with my own blood, so I had to inspect the mix of dirt and blood running down my leg for a couple minutes, as well as the  two minor cuts on my elbow. Back at home, I proceeded to gingerly wash out the dirt from my leg. I’m such a wuss. I have a super low pain tolerance and unlike my nurse mother, who would have scrubbed, I patted. And eventually applied pressure and got most of the dirt out.

“If I was in Navy Seal Team Six….” I joked.

Katie and I had both been reading a book about Navy Seal Team Six, and she cracked up.

“I was just thinking that!”

I spent a good fifteen minutes soaking my leg in the bathtub and bemoaning how I’d have to eventually scrub the dirt out. Liberally applying neosporin for the dirt that hadn’t come out and about four band-aids haphazardly stuck onto my cuts, we were off to do ab workouts. Whereupon I noticed my ankle actually was swelling.

Ah, crap.

“Mom, I turned my ankle when I went running, and now it’s swelling,” I called down, thinking she’d want to know.

“Put ice on it,” was her absentminded answer. That’s the problem with having a nurse in the family. Nothing fazes her unless you’re profusely bleeding or projectile vomiting everywhere.

She must have heard me grumbling, because she calmly called back: “If there was something really wrong, you’d be screaming.”

This is what I get for having a nurse as a mother.

Katie broke out in hives, thanks to my pets, and so basically, our evening of getting in shape did not exactly go as planned.

“We’re falling apart,” I wailed, as I applied ice.

I think my behavior is regressing. I was ridiculously accident-prone in high school. Cuts, bruises, stubbed toes, jammed fingers, banged hips: ordinary on any given day. Then I went abroad and off to college and I didn’t injure myself as much. Coming home? Whaboom. This is what I get for trying to be a good person and go running. Maybe I really should stick to the pool.

 

 

Sometimes I Steal Writing From My Tumblr Account & Post it Here.

I like poking through my Tumblr archives–sometimes I have interesting thoughts that don’t quite make it to my blog. Here was one of them, published about a month ago. The sentiment was nice today.

**

Everything happens for a reason: I’m still alone to learn something. What that is, I’m not precisely sure yet. I have a feeling it has to do with self-reliance, learning how to tell myself I’m beautiful, learning how to love better, learning how to be content in the silence, how to find beauty in sadness, to find peace within myself.

Everyone talks about how wonderful falling in love is, and I can imagine it, and I can write about it, but I’m still on the outside peering in. And I think that says something too: I can let myself daydream still, because reality hasn’t ruined that for me too.

I realized something the other day: if I were to fall in love tomorrow, I would have to figure out how to fit someone into my life. I’ve never had to do that before. How scary that is; there are days where I can barely schlepp myself along. Imagine having someone else there to share the ride. I work well as a single unit—I may not necessarily like it some days, on fragile teardrop days, but I’m used to it. I can’t imagine someone being able to fit themselves into the extraordinarily complicated nooks and crannies of my life.

They would have to be someone extraordinary and maybe that’s why I’m still waiting. Or maybe it’s because I’m too good at building walls of thorns to keep anyone from getting too close like that. I’ve written my own fairytale, and the princess is imperfect, and the knight never comes, but at least it’s true.

Growing Up

Part of growing up always seems to be disillusionment.I had the most wonderful ideas in my head growing up, and by hook or by crook, I learned the truth. Sometimes things are more wonderful when you make them up yourself. That’s why I’m almost always disenchanted by movies that were originally books. I’ve created a face and a person for the characters in the book, and of course it’s different in a movie.

When I was first reading the Chronicles of Narnia, probably around age 7 or 8, and read about Turkish Delight, it sounded well..delightful. I imagined this confection of everything I liked: lots of sugar, exotic spices, a sweet sort of chewy candy. Turns out it’s actually flavored gelatin with powdered sugar. I liked the version in my head better. I was also convinced for a long period of my childhood that diamonds were a light purple. Please don’t ask me how I was so sure they were purple, I just was. That’s how they looked in my head. Talk about disappointment when I found out they were clear. I wrote elaborate notes to Santa Claus & Co. and the Tooth Fairy. (I was clearly not a cynical child.)

I think the thing I miss most about growing up is simply my child’s imagination. I amused myself for countless hours in the summer, sitting under our old bowed magnolia tree, putting together exotic soups of moss, pebbles, flowers, pine needles, and whatever else I could find. I played hide-and-go-seek with myself in the honeysuckle bushes. I pretended I was a princess, or a warrior, or a detective, hiding behind our porch swing and spying on my mother, who was calmly clipping English Ivy away from our house. I marched out into our expansive back yard with binoculars and pretended I was surveying the area for marauders. When our grass got long enough, I galloped through the back yard, pretending to be a horse or a unicorn, depending on what book I was reading that week. When mulberry time came, I clung to a high branch for dear life and shook berries down for my parents to collect, pretending I was Laura Ingalls or Anne of Green Gables. I ran across the yard and played with my next door neighbor: pirates, captive princesses, and keeping house. (I always ended up  marrying him in these games….) I probably did more with my playset than the average child: it was an obstacle course, a jungle gym, and a path over hot lava.

I don’t know if being an only child stimulated my active imagination, or if I was simply just born with it. Whatever the case, given my huge backyard, a sewing kit and stuffed animals, and a few other odds and ends, I was set loose on the seas of my imagination. I don’t know if I’ve had such a good time just by myself since. I miss that freedom. A few years ago, I sat down with my favorite stuffed animals and bag of cloth and ribbon, and tried to pretend again. I tried to weave elaborate stories around them. I couldn’t do it. I just saw them as they were, stuffed animals adorned in scraps of cloth and ribbon. They weren’t heroes or princesses or damsels in distress anymore. And I was a little sad, as I put them away. That was the end of childhood.

Writing fiction used to be like breathing. Now that I’m older and life is more complicated, the best I can get to is creative non-fiction. I’m a little more cynical now. I gave up on Barbie dolls and pink tutus and Prince Charming. Now nineteen and a little wiser, I’m remembering the best stories come from your head. Where you can lose yourself and take yourself away from this crazy world for a little while. You can lost in your own thoughts and dream, and maybe there, white knights in shining armor do come and save the day. True love is real again. Stuffed animals can be whoever you want them to be, and a soup of sticks and stones is the finest feast you can serve.

De-Cluttering & Writing

I knew pulling the main drawer of my giant desk out was a bad idea, but in the spirit of decluttering, I did it anyway. I was right. Puffs of dust accompanied my yanking. I immediately sneezed. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times.

Goddammit.

I struggled to my feet and wiped my watering eyes with the back of my hand. I grabbed one tissue, but two more sneezes sent me back into my bathroom for the entire box.

My desk is a landing place for the all the crap I bring home. All the mail I don’t know what to do with, random scraps of paper with addresses, beginnings of stories, memos to myself, to-do lists, odd assortments of jewelry, ticket stubs…it all lands somewhere on my desk. The clutter means I can’t actually use my desk for the purpose it was meant for. So I end up writing or typing on my bed and invariably getting distracted or falling asleep. My mom’s been on a cleaning kick for the last few days–we shredded and threw out heaps and heaps of papers from our cramped little study. It’s weird–you can actually see the floor and walls of it now.

I knew there were a lot of things I’d hastily shoved in my desk when I came home on holidays–“What, no, I cleaned, what are you talking about? There’s nothing on the floor.” *cough, don’tlookinthedeskjustdon’tdoit cough*.  Sure enough.

Things I Found:

• the confirmation from German Rotary that I had successfully completed my exchange year. Oops.
• the choir picture from the music tour I went on between junior and senior year
• my letter opener. (FINALLY).
• millions of bank statements, loan papers, and paycheck stubs. (They are now neatly filed away.)
• lots of embarrassing short story snippets from when I was about twelve.
• stationary!!! YAY, now I can get back to writing pretty letters!
• an unused Moleskine journal.
• printer ink.
• my handmade luggage tags, lovingly written and drawn by my three closest friends from exchange.
• all of my exchange year artifacts, notes, programs, and maps.

I also re-filed everything in my letter box. In the last few years, I’ve taken to writing a copious amount of letters. I love letter-writing. I love getting stuff in the mail. Win-win. I have quite an impressive stack from my year abroad and from this year. Most of the letters have foreign stamps on them–Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, India, France, Italy–but I hope to have more US stamps in my collection this next year. 🙂 I divide them according to year, and tie a gigantic ribbon around that bundle. I just closed off my 2011-2012 bundle.

My desk is now uncluttered and functional. I have also taped three words above my desk:

Humility.

Surrender.

Write.

I took this from Dear Sugar’s column (http://therumpus.net) as advice as I write this summer away. It is a good reminder of the best way to write. To do it with humility, to give in to it, and simply, to do it in the first place.

The Most Mixed Up

I am the most mixed up human melting pot of emotions and feelings and sheer confusion at the moment. I am simultaneously thrilled, giddy, excited–that feeling when you’re on a rollercoaster and having a great time, but also possibly considering the fact that you’re going to throw up your lunch in the next five minutes?–and homesick, uncertain, and frustrated.

Clarification:

SUPER HAPPY it’s summer and I don’t have schoolwork. SUPER SAD I’m not in Geneseo with everyone.

My one year “coming home from Germany” anniversary is coming up fast, and I don’t know quite how to feel about it. You may have noticed my blog has been inundated with Germany lately and my exchange year. Yeah. Not really sure where all this came from; it just sort of rocketed itself out of the sky and into my brain without really knocking first. So I’m as befuddled as you. I’m basically super homesick and really want to be back with my friends and family abroad. I just miss Hamburg and everything with every fiber of my being, and it hurts.

To go along with that, two of my closest German friends are coming to Cooperstown for a week and staying with me. OMFG, I actually am not handling this news very maturely at all, because I’ve been dancing around my kitchen a lot and woolgathering a lot, every time I think about it. And my mother agreed today to let them stay with us, so HOLY COW, this is happening, in less than 40 days, and I’m soooooo super stoked about it, if you couldn’t tell. They’re like family.

AND TO TACK ON, I might be spending 2013-2014 back in Germany, which blows my mind. If things work out the way I want them to, at this time next year, I will be back in Germany. I’m so excited I don’t know what to do with myself except maybe cry, laugh, vomit, and write copiously. SO MANY FEELINGS.

At the same time, I’m also pretty darn pleased to be home. My small town just, ugh, it just loves you when you come home. There’s this feeling of security and warmth and contentment whenever I come home. And I love seeing my parents and my other friends. However, I’m starting to get that creeping feeling of boredom, and that, well that just can’t happen, or I’ll go crazy.

I’m also being cornered for “YOUR FUTURE” lectures, which are unavoidable, I guess, when you’re almost twenty years old and have concerned, doting parents. (While my parents support me in my English major, they’re also very concerned I’m going to wind up homeless somewhere, selling haikus for five cents, or something like that. So we have a lot of this YOUR FUTURE talks.) I know they’re well meant, but they still irk me. I have to go my speed and do things my way. Otherwise it’s disgruntling. And I was very disgruntled today, when my mom decided to “take things into her own hands”. They do the best they can, and I know it’s frustrating, watching me muddle along and not know what the hell I’m doing. Gosh, it’s frustrating even for me, leading me to my next point…

I need a resume. I got nothing. For an English major, my resume is pitifully blank. I write, but I don’t write for anything. And everywhere I’ve been looking needs a cover letter and a resume, and something on the resume, which basically goes without saying. Very disheartening. There’s also the creeping fear that what I write isn’t appealing enough or good enough to catch on anywhere, and that I’ll spend the rest of my life doing something I hate to make money.

Okay, the future’s terrifying, enough about that.

So it’s this weird mix of all these conflicting emotions, and I’m about to pop. It’s like I’m a soda bottle and someone’s been shaking me for the last month, and I’m juuuuuuuust about ready to explode.

They say these are the most exciting times of your life, when you’re in your twenties. That may be, but I think they’d be a lot more exciting if I could just figure out me for a start.

Some things you don’t forget.

You know when you’re ALMOST asleep and then this brilliant idea or thought flashes across the fading horizon of your consciousness? And you have that inner debate about whether to wake up and write it all down now, while you still remind it, or cross your fingers that you’ll remember it in the morning, and go to sleep? Yeah, had one of those a couple nights ago. And since I never remember anything from my last 30 seconds of consciousness before I hit Dreamland, I shook myself awake, turned on my light, and wrote these lines down. (Also managed to rouse my mother, who irritably stomped out of bed and demanded why the hell I was up at 2 am scribbling, because some people in this family actually got up at 6 am and went to work. Ouch. Low blow Mom. And oh so accurate. Which was why it was so low. I’M TRYING TO FIND EMPLOYMENT, OKAY, JESUS.)

Anyway. here’s my half asleep thought:

**

“Sometimes, somebody will say something, and you just flip, like a switch, to the next memory, to another train of thought. We flicker in and out of the light, in and out of shadow, like half-forgotten lemony fragments of memory, slightly worn, yellowing, curling a little at the edges. And there are things you don’t remember, like what you were wearing or why he came over to you, or if you were with other people. And there are things you don’t forget, like when he handed you his number and slid out of sight, or the first time he held you. Sometimes you try to forget first love. But maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe there’s something real important in there, mixed in with the heartbreak of losing first love and a little innocence and all the insignificant details we hold onto, while we forget the important parts.”

**

Pretty, isn’t it? Trouble is, I have no idea what it means. Or why I thought of it seconds before drifting into a deep sleep. Or even what I should do with it. I hate unresolved story fragments.

On Mowing & Subsequent “Parent Points”

I don’t know, maybe I secretly like torturing myself, because I think only that accounts for why I have volunteered to mow our lawn twice now. Once was bad enough. But twice? I think this new neatnik me is weird, and while my parents certainly appreciate her, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about having to have everything “just so”. But our yard was beginning to look a little like a jungle, and I heard my dad sigh about having to mow the grass when he got home from work, and I have an overprotective streak. (As my parents get older, so does Amy worry more, even though they’re in perfectly good health.)

So after getting back from job hunting today, I jumped into mowing our lawn. Can I just say something real quick? I have a really big fucking lawn to mow, in terms of normally sized backyards. (3/4 of an acre. Not huge, but bigger than most of my friends’ lawns.) And the only mower we own is a push mower. Also, because my parents really really really really like planting things, there are no less than seven or eight shrubs/trees/bushes smack dab in the middle of the front lawn, and three  gardens/flowerbeds to dodge in the backyard. And three more trees in the backyard. Like. WHAT. A mower’s nightmare. Oh, and I have a really big dog, who also happens to leave really big poops, which I discover by stepping on, or mowing over. Yucko.

So here’s the main reason behind my volunteerism. Yes, there’s this obsessive weird new neatnik side. And concern over my parents’ well-being. There is also the idea of parent points. Ah yes, all you undegrads–and overgrads too–living at home. We are *ahem*, legally adults, but we live under Mommy and Daddy’s roof and eat their food and up their electric and water bills, and so on and so forth. And typically, abide by their rules. The more parent points I earn this summer, the more relaxed they are about granting my requests. So things like: “Mom, can I have the car tonight?” don’t take as much debating. Or “Can I go to Canada in August?” or other things like that, well, they go a lot smoother. I seem to have racked up a good number of parent points, just by keeping my room clean. (My mom is in shock and a little tentative about being hopeful it’ll last.)

So, mowing. Our grass is on crack or something, because it’s growing ridiculously fast. It can’t have anything to do with the rain or anything. No, it’s definitely on crack. And today was super hot, and because I live in a small town and live on a fairly main road, I got about twenty people riding by and yelling at me from car windows. Because I’m a loser and will never grow up, I pretend that the lawn is an obstacle course/video game. I get fifty points for not getting scratched by the pine trees on the far right corner. (That HURTS.) If I miss dog poop, I get twenty-five points. Not falling down the hill in the backyard gets me ten points. (Failed. I slid. On my butt. With the lawnmower. It was not fun.) I get to grumble about how unnecessary all these stupid trees are–no but really, did no one think about trying to mow under flowering, prickly bushes? (Okay, but they are pretty. But, ugh!)

The only consolation about all this is that I get a free arm workout  for about an hour and a half. And I’m developing calluses–I have two tremendous blisters on the insides of my thumbs–which is always a nice bonus. Just don’t expect me to squeeze or open any sticky jars in the next couple of days. Ouch.

I probably also sweated out most of the toxins in my body/the rest of my summer cold. Probably also a few pounds. And you know, there’s nothing like taking your hair down and having a wash of grass, twig particles, and leaves carpet your feet. And then I made dinner–after showering. Major parent points today. (Might have also been trying to atone for getting up at a sinfully late hour today….ahemmm….)

All I ask is for our grass to grow a little slower. And maybe a riding mower. Yeah. That would be nice.

Bittersweet

Last night, I wrote:

I need to go home.

I don’t want to, but I need to.

I need space to air out all these jumbled thoughts and feelings. I need space. I need my own bed and my lake and my childhood friends who know me best.

I need to live a quieter kind of life, where no one expects things from me, judges me, compares me with others. I need to be weightless for four months, to set my own standards, take a breath from this crazy, hectic life. I need to go home. I need a little unconditional love and I need a time to reassess my priorities. I need to stop bouncing from extreme happiness to extreme sadness. Balance, it’s all about the balance.

Three and a half more days. It’s so bittersweet.

I woke up this morning realizing I was going home so soon! I’m excited to go home, but I’m also sad to leave. And I know after about three weeks home, I’m going to be looking for any excuse to leave my small little town and do something different.  At college, there is never room for monotony. There are always new people to meet, friends to hang out, sleepovers at any point in the week. There are always events to go to and trips to take. I love my little town, but it’s small. I know all the people there. There will be a certain monotony to going to work every day. I’m going to go cabin-crazy, I can already see it.

On another level, I do need to go home. This semester buffeted me around a lot, and I need to distance myself from the girl I am here, figure out what she wants and more importantly, what she needs. I need to reassess my priorities. I need to eat healthy again, cuddle with my pets, spend time with my family, see my old friends. I need to make money, ugh.

There have been so many blessings in this year though. Yesterday, at work, my bosses brought in doughnuts, bagels, and cream cheese for breakfast and bought us pizza and made salad for lunch. They wanted to say thank you for all the work we do. It’s the greatest work environment; there’s a lot of laughter and teasing and a constant willingness to help. One of the women brought her baby in, and all four of us girls immediately got down onto the floor to play with her. I had the cast party for my show last night too. We went out to dinner, watched Bridesmaids, and had our own mini luau. I cannot say enough how lucky I feel to have gotten the chance to work with such an amazing group of people. I laugh so hard when I’m with them, feel so comfortable around them, and we just work so well together.  We tell silly stories, inside jokes develop like breathing, and the fact that we all say/do awkward things makes for general hilarity.

The weather finally stopped deciding to be a bitch for finals week, and it’s been warm and sunny lately. I’m more or less caught up on finals work. I laid out in the sun and shared a bottle of wine with friends. I have a fantastic suite for next year.

It’s bittersweet, saying goodbye. But I’ll be back in four months, ready and rejuvenated with year 2.

PS:

Dear friends: please come say goodbye before I leave on Tuesday!

Goodbye freshman year.

The day classes ended, I tried to write one of those nice little wrap up posts, you know, about how I felt about freshman year being over. My general sentiments about the year, my growth, all that stuff. And predictably, I got halfway through and got distracted, which I think sums up my year here pretty well. I also didn’t quite believe that classes were done–the end of the year just sort of  snuck up on me. (Thanks to one all nighter and my show opening the last week of classes, I also managed to miss a lot of classes the last week, oops.) I still keep forgetting that I won’t be in Geneseo this time next week, that I’ll be home, and that’s weird too.

My year was a rollercoaster. I spent the first half of first semester as a confused, culture-shocked IR and Comm major, who was still waking up speaking German and trying to cope with being back in America. Yeah, that was rough. And then halfway through first semester, I declared an English major, found a focal point in theatre, started making real friends, and things solidified. I found my feet again. I made a lot of stupid mistakes, like most people do. I did a lot of good, interesting things too, like most people do. Second semester I found some of my best friends here and was working on solidly digging my roots down in this soil. For a girl who gets transplanted so often and so frequently, I’ve gotten pretty good at putting roots down wherever I can, and becoming that obnoxious, pesky dandelion you can never get out of your garden.

I fell in love and out of love, there are nights I don’t remember, nights I wish I hadn’t remembered, classes that were like torture, professors who I admire and respect so much, interesting topics and discussions that I’d never thought of before. There was a lot of personal growth, a lot of mental growth, and apparently, I even grew another inch. I got myself into a lot of awkward situations and managed to salvage a lot of them too. (I do not create awkward moments, I am the awkward moment.) I learned about living with another person, and the ups and downs of that. I learned that I can get my butt from Southside to Welles in seven minutes if I wake up ten minutes before class begins. Starbucks is my life–all attempts to decrease my caffeine addiction this year failed. I fell back in love with theatre and music. I figured out I have to take a chance on things now and then, and learned to believe in my words as much as my friends do. (Thank you to everyone who asked me why I wasn’t an English major, and challenged me to become one.) I found a lot of beautiful people in my life, and there are definitely people I wish I could have known sooner, but better late than never, right?

I cannot believe it has almost been a year since I got off the plane in Albany, fresh out of a year from Germany. I mourn the loss of that girl, a little. I cannot believe I’m done with my first year of college. And while my heart, a lot of it, is still with my friends and family in Germany, I have learned to love it here too. I am determined to not just survive college, but to thrive and grow. Time flies. Where will I be in another year? I’m going to be a sophomore. My older friends will be seniors–didn’t you just graduate from high school?

It was a growing year. An adjustment year. A perspective year. And now I’m heading into a summer of hard work, changes, and preparation for my second year.

Have a beautiful summer everyone. I’ll miss you! Happy end of classes and good luck with the end of finals!