Every semester, my friends and I go through the same thing: shock. What do you mean another semester is gone? What do you mean we’re going to be seniors in less than a year? What do you MEAN we can’t go on living the good life in college forever?
For that reason, I do something every semester that grounds me to prepare for the rest of the semester to come. I reminisce.
Some people say that you can’t go forward until you go back, and I think the beginning of a semester is an important time to do that. Sometimes I look through old journal entries. I once sat and tried to remember every class I’ve taken since I came to college (I failed in doing so).
This semester, I decided that I would catch two squirrels with one acorn. I organized my file folders for my new external hard drive and reminisced at the same time. It was convenient, necessary, and cleansing.
It’s amazing how many things I forgot about doing over the last two and a half years. At the same time, it’s amazing I got so much done in the past two and a half years, and amazing that I did so many things not marked by a file on my computer. I’ve come so far in my ability to write papers, make videos, and find something interesting to talk about from material that seems dull.
The best part for me was also remembering the people who helped me with each paper, project, and presentation along the way. In twenty years, my degree is going to matter, but the people that helped me get it and stayed in my life afterwards are going to be much more important than a piece of paper with some fancy font on it.
At the beginning of every semester, academics take a huge jump to the top of my priorities list. It becomes the thing at the center of my existence. Therefore, it’s important for me to reminded, time and again, that one thing will always beat out academics: people, especially people I care about.
And that’s something I think everyone should be reminded of sometimes.
Leave a Reply