This I Have Learned (Final Blog)

 I have learned that staying busy and knowing what’s to come keeps me less stressed than having nothing to do. I see myself as a natural worrier, always thinking about what’s to come. Throughout high school, the more AP classes I had, the less stressed I was. I’m still traumatized from sophomore year AP chemistry because of the countless hours I spent studying for the class, and when I wasn’t studying for it, I was worrying about it. The next year, I felt like I was really the “overworked junior” as I prepped for the SAT and took two AP classes. That year genuinely stunted my growth, I slept at three in the morning every day. The reason? Not my AP classes, not my SAT class, but something so insignificant I was confused how it had such an effect on my life: GBBE. It was a regular class, but the thing that made it unbearable was the fact that the teacher had no idea what she was doing, and what was required of the students was different than what we were promised. I didn’t know I’d have to stay up all night teaching myself, I didn’t know we had 30+ page projects, and most of all, I wasn’t forewarned of how “behind” a teacher could really get. The reason I struggled so much mentally and physically that year is because I didn’t know what to expect. But now, senior year, my experiences (the four APs that I took along with history and organic chemistry) have taught me what I was told they would, and I have been tucked into bed instead of slumped over a textbook every night because of that. It sounds like a lot, but it is the most peaceful I have been in all of high school because I was able to prepare myself in advance. 

A lesson that stuck out to me as it was taught was “Siddhartha.” The fact that the author kept all of the “bad” in (referring to his obsession with money), talked about how it consumed his life, and most of all, how it was a regular thing, really struck me. It wasn’t as theatrical as Oedipus or as deadly as Meusault’s, but it was something that is so widely experienced and was taken seriously in its severity to impact one’s life. I felt so seen in how my insignificant struggles of secondary education could impact me so heavily. Yes, I experienced struggles with time management and learned from it, but I was not perfect after. I still struggled, and memories of it still haunted me (I can’t hear about bacteria without flinching, as if the gram stain slide is shattering over the Bunsen burner in front of me all over again), and it is not completely me, only a part of me. The most important part of any experience is what one does with the consequences that follow it. I choose to find all parts of the truth in whatever I do, so that I can prepare for the good and the bad, and later I will still take time to digest the unexpected. So yes, staying busy keeps me on my toes, but it also keeps me in the present, so I can give each stage of an experience the time it deserves to be completely understood.