I’m going to be a better person… I’m going to refrain from bullying my sister… I’m going to get a 7 in every subject at school…
The typical quixotic resolutions of the new year. Screw that.
I’m never a big dreamer, so I never invest myself in the resolution crap every new year. Instead of making unrealistic goals and wallowing in dreams, it should be a time to reflect on the past year, learn from experiences, and be thankful for everything. Personally, 2019 was a year full of new encounters, experiences, and challenges that made life so much more interesting.
Looking at this year, I have mixed feelings about what to think in terms of what I achieved. Going into 2019, I wasn’t particularly sure of what I should tackle, as my mind just wasn’t thinking on self-improvement. Instead, I was still indulged in the many challenges entering UCC and getting used to the community. Of course, grade 9 was a strange year. Though I met tons of cool new people at school, there wasn’t anything new achieved other than being introduced to the school community, the cliche term used by our principal, the UCC bubble.
On the surface, not much happened. To be frank, being in high school was a lot less exciting than I expected it to be, which I guess from the perspective of an eight grade is something life changing. But in the same sense, looking at going to university as some daunting future task will seem miniscule when I look back at myself years from now. My point is, the only thing that changed the school I’m going to. Through ‘adaption’ in this new environment, I feel that I didn’t achieve anything. Moreover, I didn’t even expect to achieve anything. Which was how I began to realize this passivity was affecting my personal growth, and I needed to change – not schools, but my mentality.
On a more personal and psychological level, I feel that I have grown and achieved more than ever. This blog is a clear example. I started this blog thinking it would just be a stupid coding project that I would abandon halfway through, but now I find passion in recording my thoughts on many things in life and to have a place to keep track of my growth. To me, starting high school at UCC is probably a pretty pivotal moment of my life socially. Though academics wasn’t a huge problem, the change in community was hard to adjust to. At PACE, everyone knew each other. It was a tight group of kids who enjoyed the presence of each other. I feel that coming to UCC has brought me to realize that a community is larger than what it seems to be, and that there are a variety of communities that one must engage themselves in.
Though monday assemblies are quite boring, I remember distinctively this one speaker who spoke about his time at UCC. He said to venture out of the school and make connections with others who are not in this ‘bubble’. Why? Why can’t we just reside within the comfort zone of friends and school peers? We learn about others who are different. We grow from talking to people who have different experiences. Ultimately, I think I metally achieved something this year. I learned the importance of viewing the perspectives of different people. I learned to spend time with those who share similar values but also those who believe differently or have different lives than me.
Before I ramble on for too long, I also had some other takeaways this year. With change, there is the chance to explore something novel and foreign. Without doubt there were tons of changes in my social and academic life, and I think the major takeaways were the challenges I faced along the way.
In retrospect, this biggest lesson I learned this year was to not overcommit to things I do. It is impossible to give 100% on everything 24/7. For the past year, the piling of various activities posed a major challenge to my time management skills. I constantly felt worn out and I wasn’t sure what was depleting all my energy. As I started to let go of things and put what I cared more in prescedence of other less valued things, I felt rocks being lifted off my shoulder.
I blindlessly work at things without thinking. That’s me. I often get so distracted by the task at hand that I forget what the goal is. This year, I realized the importance of having purpose in my actions, in a variety of contexts, such as academics, volleyball, and also writing. For example, I realized how the process of learning is so much more crucial than the actual outcome. I realize the need to change my achievement-oriented mentality, which is ironic considering my point at the start of this post. In writing, I am now attempting to get to the point in stead of rambling, which is also ironic.
I like to overthink. Ok I understand that this completely contradicts my statement on how “I work without thinking”, but let me explain. When I actually have to descide on something, I have the tendency to consider every aspect of this descision and how it will affect me. This is a major problem as people are impatient (Fun fact: people are becoming more and more impatient according to a scientific study). I began to develop myself into being more bold in my descisions and just going for it. This is a long-term goal clearly as I still can’t decide if I want vanilla or chocolate when waiting in line at Baskin Robins. Maybe there are too many options nowadays. I will definitely talk about this in a future post.
All in all, there were quite a few morals to my life story this past year!