After working my first quarter as an RA, one minor surgery, a group project from hell, an impromptu trip to Canada, and seasonal affective disorder officially scoring 1 point against me… I’ve lived to tell the tale of my sophomore fall quarter. :))))))

This quarter started out like any other. I made resolutions (yes, I make them every quarter 🥸), created a new screensaver for my laptop on Canva, and thought of all the fun things I wanted to do with my friends in the fall. 

I specifically remember sitting at my desk shift the Monday before the first day of school and writing out a prayer for this quarter. I had been late to that desk shift because I had forgotten about it. Already it seemed like the quarter was starting out on the wrong foot. How long could I keep up this image of having everything together? How long would it be before life no longer felt too good to be true? 

The prayer, that I wrote in my notes app, was long but it ended with: 

“In all, I just give my second year of college as a sacrifice to You.”

Let’s just say I did NOT keep this energy. 😅

I think when I wrote this, I was thinking about all the ways that I was going to be a good ___ . Fill in that blank with any of the following: student, friend, RA, etc. I was thinking about all the ways I wanted to serve other people, help my friends out, love well etc. I asked questions like: who am I gonna befriend? what friendships am I gonna focus on? what fun things am I going to plan?

But once the quarter started, it was clear that I was not gonna be the one taking care of other people. In fact, I was the one that probably needed the help. 🥴

God took me to this place of need for only the things that matter and revealed to me things that were clouding my vision.

I’m sad to say that I let a lot of things go this quarter that I never thought I would… things like going to church, eating full meals, sleeping… I’ll stop there 😅. (I’m writing this in retrospect and actually laughing while writing, so it’s okay it’s funny now 👹). I also made a lot of mistakes this quarter: said the wrong things, forgot deadlines, didn’t handle things the way the right way.

I was utterly reminded of my utter inadequacy and inability to do this in my own strength. 

The other day, I was looking back at my “sophomore fall” Pinterest board and got very sad. I had all these goals and values I wanted to stick to, and it was just a reminder of how quickly I lost sight of what truly mattered.

If I had one word to describe the quarter it would be: nonstop. Some days the only time I felt solace was when I finally fell in bed at 2am or 3am after finishing an assignment. 

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So with all that being said, what did I takeaway from this quarter?

To sum it up in a phrase (alt post title): It’s not that deep, but love is.

I’m not a perfectionist but as Taylor Swift once put it, “I just try try try.” I knew this about myself before, but this quarter the attribute revealed itself as a potential issue. My point is not that I’m going to stop giving 110% to everything that I do. However, I need to stop letting the fear of anything less than ~almost perfection~ leave me in CRUMBS. 

Being at a place like Northwestern, unfortunately, you have people telling you that it’s okay if you don’t win the race (metaphoric race) but when you fall they are still sprinting towards the finish line. And they’ll come back to help you up, but only with a gold medal in hand. Better yet, they’ll tell you to take care of yourself after you fall but then applaud you for running on a broken foot. 

But just because you’re surrounded by a culture doesn’t mean you have to give into it.

I’ve been asking myself where my inability to let go of “almost perfection” comes from. To reiterate, having a good work ethic and striving to do things well is not bad. However, good things can go sour if we’re not careful. Sin came because Adam and Eve wanted good things that were apart from God. 

And I was shown what good things I was pursuing that were apart from Him.

Let me explain 👇🏽😌

One place I think my striving might come from is this idea that if I don’t do well in my academics, I won’t have anything else to show. What else will I be good at? What else will I be successful in?

But something that I’ve consistently tried to remind myself of is this:

What I will remember from college is not my GPA, not the grades I got, not the feel-good comments I got from my professor. It’s the friends I made along the way. 

(saying that in the most UNironic way possible LOL)

I realized this quarter, that many of my stressors are just distractions. Our grades, our job, our awards, we are not defined by any of it. And the fear of failure within academics can come from a belief that those things DO define us.

The only thing that we should be defined by is what created us, or rather who created us. And luckily for us, that person did something that allows us to cease our striving and our need to be worthy.

I was shown how unimportant the things I was chasing after were and was brought to a place of forced stillness. In this place, God showed me the simplicity of His love and His intended simplicity for life.

Our one mission on Earth is to love God and love people. If something is getting in the way of either… is it worth it?

No one asked me to be everything to everyone. And realizing that no one needed me was both shattering and freeing. 

Realizing that God’s love is enough was both terrifying and comforting. 

And going through a challenging season was both exhausting and molding. 

I tried to make those thoughts coherent. Thanks for reading 🙂

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Memes, Bops, and Girlypops of the quarter:

memes:

bops: (they all represent a different time or event)

girlypops:

I’m SO thankful for all my friends on campus, new and old, for bringing me joy and laughs this quarter. Big shoutout to my friends Abby and Tanya who were always on the other end of the line helping me to process the hell that I was going through 🥵