This semester, I may have gone a bit overboard.
Eighteen credits was normal in the College of Science, but a bit unusual in Arts and Letters. Same amount of credits, but in Arts and Letters that puts you up to six classes, no labs, which is both great and terrifying. Lots of reading, but if I love it, who cares? And the majority of the friends that caused 90 minute dinners to be a thing and dropped into my room every other day are abroad, so that frees up a lot of my time.
But then I did some more things to fill up the empty hours. I signed up for dance, like last semester, and I still do hall choir. I decided I wanted to be my dorm’s tech liaison, so mostly I turn the printer off and on again and ‘borrow’ paper from neighboring dorms when we run out. Still a relatively low time commitment, and I’m on the dorm calendar with office hours which makes me feel pretty important. Then I signed up for Handbell Choir to see a friend I already had, and I inadvertently made some new ones who are awesome.
I also decided to write for Her Campus, while telling very, very few of my real-life friends.
It’s kind of amazing to write what I think and what I see people talking about without having people I know well connect me to my writing. It’s like writing under a pseudonym, and if I imagine that no one who knows me well enough to know my last name will ever read it, I am free of any anxiety. Not that I’ve gotten particularly controversial (I’m sure I’ll get to politics soon enough), but I know that I can speak openly.
Then I really did a stupid thing.
My RA emailed our section about providing a running plan if we wanted to run the Holy Half.
Yeah. I emailed her back.
For the 10k version, at least. My roommate is the greatest coach who is teaching me actual stretches, and crossing off the miles everyday is pretty great. Except I can’t actually run. Right now, it’s mostly aiming for the full distance and then walking part of it. It’s a work in progress. But again, I didn’t tell most of my friends about this, and it makes me more determined to complete it. All that’s holding me to this goal is a box on my calendar I check off every day. They’ll probably figure it out when they’re back on campus, but it’s pretty incredible that I can just do some things purely for myself.
At some point, more people will know about all of this. Women in my dorm might put two and two together and match my face to the name on these articles (and one already has), my family might notice when I willingly go running over break that I really am determined to do this, and my friends might notice that I missed them so much I found a whole bunch of amazing activities to do. I’ll be glad they know eventually, I’m sure, but until I really get into habits of writing and running, it’s nice to be quiet about it all and just enjoy.
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