In the beginning of the year, for my very first Her Campus article, I wrote about how having a difficult junior year completely shifted my academic career and life path (for the short-term at least) but led to some surprisingly positive experiences. Since it’s close to the end of my first full year of school since 2014-15, I thought I’d take a look back and see how things went and if I’m as happy with my life now I was in late August.
Coming back to Kenyon, I was full of vim and vigor and ready and willing to jump into things that I’d always kind of wanted to do but was always just a little too scared or reluctant to try. Over the course of the semester, I got involved with three different theatrical productions, which was an absolute dream. I’d done some theater in high school, but when I got to Kenyon I was just too incredibly shy and nervous to really show my strengths. Getting more involved with theater, even on a relatively small scale, made me feel like, as clichéd as it sounds like I was becoming more of who I wanted to be.
Academically, I felt much more at home than I ever did at Exeter, and thoroughly enjoyed getting back into doing schoolwork after a brief hiatus. I’d been worried over the summer about figuring out classes but I ended up in what felt like liberal arts heaven, with genuinely interesting classes in drama, literature, and classics informing and enriching each other. If it sounds like I’m painting too idyllic of a painting, to a certain extent I am. I can’t say I practiced the best study habits, and maybe only functioned as well as I did because of the way assignments were pretty evenly spread out the structure of my days, and the fact I was quite busy outside of class and just had to work whenever I could. Overall, however, the semester was a real confidence booster and reminded me that, hey! I actually enjoy this “learning” thing.
Socially, the biggest thing is that being around my friends was (and continues to be) a balm for my soul. I’d been isolated from people my own age I was close to for around eight months, with a few visits in the summer to keep me sane, and had been craving sustained contact with peers. I was ready and willing to make new friends and excited to get back into this wonderful group dynamic I’d somehow found myself in at the end of sophomore year. And in the most important ways, I found what I was looking for.
I stand by my statement that my friends are a balm for my soul, but I won’t say that things are always simple or easy all the time every day. Over the past year (and more) it’s been a constant process of discovering that love and friendship are some of the most complex, multi-faceted, ever-changing parts of life. Some feelings took time and effort to change and work and sometimes I could never find the right words to say what I truly meant. I still want to get better at actively trying to become friends with someone rather than passively hoping that just by being near them at dinner I’ll actually get to know them.
But I digress a bit, so I’ll get back to more of a narrative of the year. Fall semester, to sum up, was invigorating. However, it did have to end, and winter break arrived. Now, I just want to say, I really do love my family and being home, but I’m never quite as productive away from school. In hindsight, I realize I perhaps should have done more to prepare for summer, or more to keep in touch with more people or more … something. Whatever happened, I started second semester with slightly less energy than I started the first semester. A few more doubts about myself started to creep in.
I’ve discovered that relying on outside forces rather than internal pressure to do school work only works so well for so long. Somehow I still haven’t found the secret to motivating myself. Maybe there isn’t one, but I can probably do better than I have been. And sometimes, like now, when I’m working on this article at 2:41 am, I think “My goodness, how on EARTH did I let this happen?!”
So perhaps I’m not as idealistic as I was in the beginning of the year, but I do think I’ve grown a lot. I’ve been able to have conversations I honestly didn’t think were possible in, say, October, and I’ve been able to find my way out of a somewhat dark hole caused by stress and disappointment in myself. Sure, I’m worried about the summer and not having many concrete plans, and sure, I don’t know how I’m going to handle my weird last semester at Kenyon, and sure there are so many things that I wish I’d done differently, but sometimes you just gotta let things go and call it a night. I’m still here, I still love my friends, I still love English, and I’ll figure it (whatever “it” is; life maybe?) out.
Image Credits: Katie Dembinski