self-reflection

My commonplaces are as rhizomatic as I am. My thoughts and ideas flow and emerge in unpredictable patterns, taking on new roots at will. 

Resolutions do not indicate a betrayal of the past, but more of a betrothed brighter future. In your resolve to resolute throughout 2023, strive for glimmers of improvement, rather than bold flashes of drastic change.

I never read my columns once they are published because I’m always afraid of discovering an unintended meaning in my words that I didn’t notice when I first wrote it. What if I come across as selfish, or cocky when writing my columns? What if they aren’t relatable at all?

There’s so much good and bad to unpack, but I won’t bore you with the particulars. Even though I felt like I was being thrown back and forth a lot, I managed to make it through all right – and I’ve learned some valuable lessons along the way.

As I prepare for my senior year at UC Berkeley, I find myself in a state of self-reflection. I look back at my past years, all the things I’ve experienced and think about how they’ve all led me to where I am now. As I approach my last year of undergrad, I’m filled with excitement, angst, nerves, gratitude and every emotion I could imagine.

Going home from college is always a strange and emotional experience — from excitement in seeing friends and family to missing your friends from school.

It is in this atmosphere of reduction that the sad girl comes in. On TikTok, she may be described as a “Virgin Suicides”/“Bojack Horseman”/Lana Del Rey/“Gone Girl”/Mitski fan. She is ruminative and sad, while enjoying ruminative and sad media.

Although many kids tend to grow out of their diary-writing days, I — on the other hand — still fill most of my nights with pages and pages of entries to this day. Even at 22 years old, I keep a diary within close range, although I have definitely graduated passed puppies and pink feathers.

This semester, I truly outdid myself. Spring 2022 was by far the busiest semester I have ever had, and I learned a lot from it.

I think the concept of gap years is brilliant, it allows students everywhere to take a necessary breather and decompress from what they have come to perceive as the obligation of education and come to appreciate what education actually ought to be- a privilege and a joy.