Art by Sacha Irick
It’s that time of year again. The flowers are in bloom, the weather fluctuates between nicely tropical and subarctic in the span of a day and the beach is just inviting enough to tempt you to its shores but too cold for that bikini you’ve been saving since September. In other words, it’s spring time in Malibu, and for Pepperdine students, finals are just around the corner.
Being the truant I am, finals haven’t started to affect me yet — much. Rather, one thing that has constantly been on my mind is the closing of yet another chapter in my college life — the second one out of four, which means that I am halfway done with college already. Now that’s a terrifying thought. I am no longer the bright-eyed and bushy tailed freshman, nor am I the abroad-sophomore, tasting the great and exotic fruits of life and all that jazz the IP office tries to sell you.
Instead, I am but a student in limbo, on the cusp of changing majors and changing life trajectories. Right now I’m waiting for that transfer letter of admission or rejection from USC, dreading the future as it dangles over my head like a grand piano tethered to the roof on a painfully thin string. Yes! Friends! Let it be known: This may be my last month at Pepperdine. I have made my plans — now I am waiting for them to come into fruition, and there is something absolutely terrifying about leaving this little Malibu bubble to confront real life as school gets out once again.
It’s become kind of annoying, really. I’d be in bed, fresh from a well-earned nap, and then the thought comes flying out of nowhere, smacking me in the face like a well-aimed baseball from the bat of a pro with a vendetta against me: Oh my goodness, in four weeks, this room will not be mine anymore.
We build our lives around certainties — not many of us can take the fast-paced, adrenaline-inducing lifestyle of the unbounded. Priorities consume us, and the routine sucks us in leaving us entirely vulnerable to change. The amount of anxiety and trepidation that threatens to creep into my soul when I think about the future is usually enough to warrant another nap. We become complacent, not daring to look the future in the eye because it’s so scary. Thus we fail to appreciate, truly, what it really means for us.
I, at the very least, have found myself pushing it away into the little closet in my brain where I keep all the other junk I do not wish to think about. It gets rather burdensome, and I believe by failing to sit down and truly evaluate things I fail to prepare myself for the change that will come in due time.
Now I can hide behind my pretty words and uniform font but nothing can change the fact that this is a highly inefficient way to go about things. One needs to suck it up and move on. This means I must face that insurmountable monster called change head on and embrace it.
In this life, many of us will scramble to hold onto things that should have long ago been left at the nearest Salvation Army donation box. These things don’t fit us anymore, or may have come from another time in life (yeah, that SPRING BREAK 2012 shirt may not fly too well over at corporate). Or maybe one just needs time to sit down and take a look at where one is going in life, and I mean really take a look — not just a cursory glance. To all of us who are graduating, and to all of us who are leaving, be it going abroad or to another school, life can be so much more exciting and thrilling in its ineffability. Yet, I have found that my habit is to twist this into a venomous kind of anxiety that prevents us from truly savoring the kind of anticipation that besets you when you turn the page of a book, only to find a new chapter waiting for you.
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Follow Andrea Wijaya on Twitter: @fyzikaa
Follow Sacha Irick on Twitter: @GraphicSacha
