Ever since I learned how to write, the first thing I did when I went back to school after summer was write about my break. Every year I would write the same thing, “I went to summer school. I had marching band summer practice. I went to cello camp.” Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed spending my summer doing those things. Except summer school. I would look at my summers as a time to catch up or to get ahead for the school year.
But this summer I took my version of a break. I started a job working on the RadGrad Project and I’ve finally slain the beast known as Calculus II. It was a busy 3 months but instead of only doing work and school I made a conscious effort to do things outside of work and school. I wanted to do things purely for the sake of my own happiness. I spontaneously went on a 2 hour hike on a Friday afternoon. I dragged myself from my bed to a 7am boxing class almost every morning for 2 weeks. I took up karate and even went weight lifting with my RadGrad team. On what I call my west coast tour, I traveled to San Diego to visit family, then onto San Francisco to meet my precious baby nephew and my new in-laws, and finally to Seattle where a friend and I watched the Mariners get creamed. To help out my grandparents, I finally demolished a large beat up greenhouse using only a hammer, pliers and my own two hands. I helped my boyfriend promote his wonderful art.
People can tell you to stop and smell the roses but only you can discover how rich life can be.
I used to make up excuses that I was too busy to do things outside of work and school. After this summer, I can never say that again. It’s simply not true. I managed to learn so much about Typescript and React and Git, mostly through error or me bugging the project manager. I’m especially proud of a completely reactive page I wrote in 4 days, whereas most of my other pages took 2 weeks to complete or were rewritten by our project manager. I finally finished Calculus, which is a huge relief since math is my weakest subject. And most importantly, I’m finally at a place in my life where I know what I want for the future.