With junior year finally coming to a close and the spring semester having wrapped up just over a month ago, I figured it was finally time to sit down and reflect.
Oh, where to begin…
This having been my second year fully in-person, I quickly realized the spring semesters always seem to fly by much faster than the fall. Why is that?
As I rang in the new year back in January, I knew time was going to fly. I mean, here I am, sitting writing this and June starts in just two days. It’s no joke when they say time seems to move faster as you get older.
Filling out the calendar for the upcoming next five months of my life left me to realize I was about to enter a time where I had not one free day. Weekends, gone. Weekdays, booked. Granted, there were exciting things to come, but it was overwhelming to say the least.
I started the semester off by missing my entire first week of school… What a great start I know. Just a few weeks prior, I became an aunt for the fourth time around and in that moment, family was the only thing that mattered. Which brings me to my first life lesson of the year.
1. Establish what’s most important to you and determine your priorities.
With the spring came a couple of curve balls, as life tends to throw at all of us once and a while. Decisions needed to be made, and for one of the first times, nobody was making them for me. It was about what I thought was right, what I wanted to do, and I found myself at a crossroads.
For me, it was a no-brainer to miss those first few days of classes – you figure, I was only missing each class once, and we all know it’s always a syllabus day anyway… Don’t get me wrong, school and my education will always be of high importance to me, but I finally had to sit back and look at the bigger picture – fly to Nashville and help my sister who has three kids all under the age of five? Or go back to school, where I would be for the next five months, and sit through an explanation of the syllabus that was already posted online? Family time just outweighed that for me.
Upon returning back to school ready for that first full week of classes, I jumped right in. I was enrolled in a variety of courses this semester that left me with an even more in depth and diversified education.
Course Schedule Spring 2023:
- Product Development
- Supply Chain Management
- Fashion Show Production
- Fashion Forecasting
- Fashion Merchandising Planning & Buying
I made myself a promise this semester – after leaving the fall burnt out and broken down, I knew that lifestyle wasn’t sustainable. Fall 2022 on top of being a student I was working a part time job, part time internship, and served several different positions on campus organizations’ executive boards. I’m a firm believer in getting any and all experience possible. I had a very “say yes to everything” mentality. That is until it was time to buckle down, submit applications for summer internships, and ultimately fly out for interviews at the height of finals week. I learned you can’t be ambitious without a balance, at least healthily… Applications were requesting I submit projects that required me to use my creativity, and with all of the burnout, I was completely tapped out and had no room for that creative energy needed. It was after a hard few days of take-out food and not leaving the house due to both physical and emotional exhaustion, where I had a phone conversation with my mom filled with a lot of important reflection and realizations.
I was willing to put my own wellbeing and health at risk just to “do it all”. It’s as if I felt as though if I didn’t take any and every opportunity in that moment, it would slip away forever and nothing else would ever come round to replace it. And it was in those moments I remembered I was only 20 years old at the time, yet already felt like life was slipping away from me. I can’t live like that. We can’t live like that. Nobody should.
I’m proud to say, leaving this semester, I did a pretty good job of making that change for myself, and let me tell you, it was the best thing for me.
January instantaneously turned into February, and I was still getting settled in. A week into my return, my roommate, Emma, came to me asking if we wanted to send in an application for a radio show with Kent State’s Black Squirrel Radio. Never thinking we’d get approved, I said yes, and we laughed about it and moved on. At least, we did, until we quickly received a response back, ecstatic to welcome us to the radio show team… So, Chaos & Cosmos was born. Just when I thought the calendar couldn’t get any fuller, every Monday, 8-10pm was now blocked out. And can I tell you something… I wouldn’t have had it any other way – which brings me to life lesson number two.
2. Be sure to fill life with things that take you out of your comfort zone.
What did we know about having a talk show, or the equipment in the studio? Absolutely nothing.
I think it’s easy to find reasons why not to do something, especially when it takes us a bit out of our comfort zone.
When I heard our radio show was two whole hours and until 10pm… I didn’t know how I felt. Sure I’m usually a night owl, but what if we didn’t have enough to talk about? What if I was too tired? What if…? That’s the thing about those what ifs, once they come, they never stop.
After reaching out to the head of the radio show requesting our time to be cut from two hours to one, then followed by zero response, I knew I was left with no choice. The show would be two hours, running until 10pm whether I liked it or not – so, what was I going to do about it?
One week before our first airing, I found out my co-host wouldn’t be joining me due to another obligation. I was terrified. Not only would it be my first time in the studio, on live radio, with a two whole hour slot, but I would also be doing it alone. Utter fear.
That Monday, I sweat through two outfits and spent about 4 hours planning, researching, and doing everything I could to ensure nothing would go wrong. How flawed is that? Can we ever really ensure nothing is going to go wrong? Nope. It took a lot of personal mental coaching to uncover a fact I heard years ago that was stored in the back of my mind – when you worry about a situation before it happens, you just put yourself through it twice. So why worry? It doesn’t seem to do anyone any good.
8 o’clock rolled around and before I knew it, two hours was up and gone. The exhilaration that ran through my body was unreal. From that moment forward, Monday nights from 8-10pm became my favorite time of the week.
If Emma had never come to me about submitting that application, or if I had been too scared to ever show up for that first radio show, my goodness I would’ve missed a lot. My comfort zone would’ve stripped me of one of the most liberating and enriching experiences this semester had to offer.
As February’s short 28 days passed, life took a bit of a turn. I began March with 4 emergency room visits, 2 doctor’s appointments, and a visit to urgent care.
Appendicitis.
It’s funny – I think when I’m away from home I never envisioned anything like that ever happening. Doctor’s visits and surgeries were only meant for home, right – where it’s comfortable and family is near? Wrong.
I had my first rude awakening as an adult on my own when I realized I was in a place where I knew absolutely no primary care doctors or offices. I had no clue which emergency rooms and hospitals were better than others, but I had to figure it out. Which brings me to three…
3. Persistence is key, and your health is important.
I woke up one morning with a pain on my lower right side, like never before. A pain so bad I would grow weak at the knees and instantaneously fall to the ground or need to grab the closest standing surface. Still thinking it was nothing (because we all think we’re superhuman or something) I continued with my day until one of my roommates brought to my attention that my pain was exactly where one’s appendix was. Finally convincing me to go to the ER, I was quickly shut down by all doctors who entered the room – “it’s just a pulled muscle” they said. Well, what a waste of a night, right?
After the pain continued and worsened for a week followed by more doctor’s visits who still persistently continued to tell me it was nothing, I finally had a nurse come in to speak with me. Before she left the room, she said something to me that I found so profound, at the time it brought tears to my eyes – “Don’t let it go undone, honey. You keep squeaking.”
Reading that now, it makes me laugh a little. What a funny way of saying things. But the overall message meant a lot at the time, and I found it to hold true for several different aspects of life. Finally, I had someone trusting what I was saying – the pain was real, and she too didn’t really believe it was nothing.
Well, what do you know, one week later I’m being admitted to the hospital with appendicitis with requests from the surgeon to get it removed the next morning.
If I had never been persistent we might not have caught it, and if I was too stubborn and put school or work over my health, I could’ve made it worse. We have one body, that’s it, and it has to last us what we would hope to be a pretty long time. So, it was in these moments I realized having to miss class to have my appendix out was more than necessary, and that life would go on. In the end, you can’t continue to go to school, get a career, and have a future if you’re in ill health. So, sometimes it’s okay to sleep in and just allow yourself a day of rest. We live in a society today, especially here in the United States, where the only way to live is fast – and the pace is only increasing. If we never leave time for rest ever, take it from me… the burnout won’t be too far behind.
Spring break came at the perfect time, just one week after my procedure. I was fortunate enough to travel to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Although I couldn’t go in the water at all due to my healing incisions, the sun was the best medicine.
Upon my return, I blinked, and April was over. Easter, Kent State Fashion Week, a weekend trip to New York City with the Fashion Student Organization, and my 21st birthday consumed the 30 days this month had to offer.
The end of April came with a lot of goodbyes. I had to walk away from things that have consumed my life for the last three years. First, the FSO (Fashion Student Organization), then the fashion show production team. Next thing I knew I was leaving Rockwell Hall (our fashion building) for the last time until I go back to graduate next year. Which brings me to 4.
4. Live in the moment and cherish the moments you do have rather than the ones you won’t.
Simple right? Yeah… not so much.
You see, this entire spring semester I was so focused on how it would be my last one spent in Ohio. And it only got worse as the months sped on. The beginning of May was filled with a lot of me leaving places feeling sad knowing it would be the last time – that life would never be like this again. I would no longer be living with two of my best friends in an apartment we made our first home as adults. I wouldn’t be a college student in a college town full of people who all shared the commonality of choosing to spend their four years of further education in small town Kent, Ohio.
There would be no more Dusty Armadillo Wednesdays or late-night Hungry Howie’s pizza. It was a downer to say the least. But then I realized – this is it. Life’s going to be full of a whole heck of a lot of moments like that. I’m 21 years old. I wasn’t meant to stay in Ohio forever, and I’m about to spend the next 12 months living in three different places across the world – all of which will be temporary just like my time in Kent.
We can’t dwell on the past. It’s so hard sometimes, I admit it, but the only thing that really matters is the moments we’re in right now.
I move to Philadelphia for the summer in 5 days, and in my last couple of weeks in Ohio I had a number of people asking me if I was excited – to which I almost always answered with an unenthusiastic and uncertain, “yeah.” No one believed me. Heck I probably wouldn’t have believed me either. But it was in those moments I explained this – At the time, Philadelphia was two weeks away, I still had to move out of my apartment in Ohio and say goodbye to a place I had finally started to call home. Also, upon moving out, I would be spending two weeks back in my hometown, trying to take in all that I could before I spent my first ever summer away from home. All I could do was stay in the moment I was in, and I still had a lot of sadness about leaving Kent. Which brings me to the fifth and final lesson of this semester.
5. It’s okay to let yourself feel. In fact, please do.
I think it’s really easy to get caught up in the chaos and just keep cruising through life without ever leaving any time for self-reflection. We keep ourselves so busy sometimes that there’s no room for deep genuine feelings.
When I was running on the schedule I did in the fall semester, it wasn’t until I reached my breaking point that I had actual tears fall from my eyes for the first time since I had moved to Ohio back in August. Once they came, they did not stop for a good few days. But what an emotional release that was.
After finally allowing myself to feel everything I had been keeping inside for months, I came out the other side surprisingly refreshed.
Sadness, happiness, anger, excitement – we have to allow ourselves to feel it all.
I found myself a lot this semester sometimes trying to invalidate my feelings – telling myself I shouldn’t feel the way I did. So, when it came time to leave Ohio behind, it was tough. I was leaving behind what felt like my young adulthood – those crazy college years everyone always talks about. Except for me, what should’ve been four whole years, was really only two.
Although what’s to come over the course of this next year is incredibly exciting, I realized it was okay and necessary to allow myself to be sad. If we don’t allow that to happen, the feelings will only continue to bottle up inside, and we will never truly be able to move on.
But now here I am – writing this exactly four days before my move to another new city, and one week from the beginning of my next journey.
What’s to Come
So as I let go of junior year and all that it taught me, I peer into senior year with bright eyes.
This coming summer I will be moving to Philadelphia to work for Urban Outfitters Inc. as a merchandising intern. Following that 10-week program, I will immediately be picking up and moving to New York City where I will be spending the entirety of my fall semester. Finally, for my last and final semester of undergrad, I will be flying across the world to live in Florence, Italy.
So, you see what I’m saying… In just three simple sentences I was able to outline my entire upcoming year. It’s easy to get ahead of myself, so for now, all I can do is try my very best to live in the current moment I’m in.
I’m beyond grateful for what this past year has given me, as I am entering this year with a more open-mind – ready to be a sponge and soak up all that I can, living in the now, and ready for adventure.
