If you read my article last week (click here for the link and no this is not self-promotion), then you would know that I am currently experiencing what I like to call the Mid-College Crisis. I think most members of the Class of 2015 are also dealing with this crisis as well. You can somewhat see it on all of our faces as we scurry around to the 101 meetings for Housing or Jumpstart or Insert Club Name Here. We wear look of someone about to plunge over the side of Niagra Falls. I know I feel sometimes like I’m in a barrel at the top of that iconic landmark. I can feel the soggy wood against my palms. I can almost feel my stomach dropping in anticipation of free falling over the edge. I can barely see right in front of my nose let alone the bottom of the Falls, because the water keeps rising around my barrel in swells of white froth. I don’t know where I am going, I don’t know what convinced me to get in this barrel in the first place, and, above all, I just wish to good heaven that I knew what was going to happen to me.
This is a letter to you, my dear class of 2015. This is a eulogy for our sanity, but also a treatise on the goods of our current lives. We live good lives. That is undisputed. So why do we charge around campus with that confused and lethargy but panicked and hungry (real hunger, because we usually are too busy to get lunch) look? Why the angst? All we are trying to do is successfully live up to the Pepperdine Standard of “being involved” and “doing everything”. It is like the air has been punched from our lungs as we run — literally — with one eye on the clock for our next appointment. It’s okay to be busy and it’s okay to be running around.
Personally, I love the organizations, boards, clubs, honor societies and just groups of fine individuals that I get to work with this semester. From my sorority (boom boom) to the Graphic team to the Songfest crew to seemingly random clubs I somehow got on the mailing list for, I truly enjoy each one. I feel like my time is well spent in each of them. I feel fulfilled by being involved in them. I wouldn’t trade the relationships, the opportunities, the moments of pure gold for anything. I feel like every event or meeting or relationship gives me a little more of what Pepperdine means, not only as an educational institution, but as a family. Cue the cheesy line about “family,” but really hear me out: if you don’t feel like something that you are pouring your life into is a kind of family, then maybe it’s not worth the investment. Just a thought. Like I’ve said before, you are reading these articles at your own risk. I think sometimes this whole “Nam Nam Knows Best” gets to my head. Because I am by nature selfish, proud, and exceedingly obnoxious and annoying, I just keep typing and typing and all this corny-licious stuff about Niagra Falls and commitment and family and think that people actually want to read it. Don’t mind me.
Anyway, for my dear junior classmates and I, overcommitment, over-caffeination, over-stress, and over-thinking acts as a kind of pseudo-sense of direction. We all seem to have some kind of trajectory, some kind of Four-or-More Year Plan to land us our dream job, dream graduate school, or dream husband (yeah, yeah, that ring by spring baloney, whatever). We are all working overtime to make sure these dreams really happen. We are all following this pseudo-sense of direction because, quite frankly, it is the only direction we have.
As a community, we have started to believe that to be a Pepperdine student means to be successful. Us upperclassmen are supposed to be confident, organized, mature and, above all, passionate. We head out into the wide world armed with recommendation letters from our favorite professor and a spreadsheet detailing our futures. We have backpacks stuffed full of honor society awards and medals draped around our necks from awards we have won, whether academic or social. Our friends text us 24/7 to hang out and our professors sing our praises. Our employers only give us good reviews. Our GPA’s have never been more impressive. Not to mention, our parents call us the favorite child and we have learned five languages from all of our abroad travels.
We pursue internships here and jobs there and all the while keep up with schoolwork, social life and call our moms on Sunday afternoons when all we want is a hug and her home-cooked chicken soup. We throw ourselves wholeheartedly into everything we are involved in — our residents, our work, our play, but never our rest. Rest when we’re done. When we’ve “arrived” and when we can look back and say that all those all-nighters and stress-induced pimples were worth it. Because this is junior year and it’s no joke. We have the Midas touch. Everything is gold.
Or is it?
This beast of a junior year has been exceedingly confusing. Sometimes, I just don’t know what I want because I am afraid I want too much. I want to excel in all my classes and I want to perform to the best of my abilities. I want to lay in my bed and watch covers of “Let It Go” from Frozen with my roommates. I want to practice writing and I want to continue to spew my thoughts into these articles. I want to attend such events as my small group, Celebration Chapel, and the Well. I want to grow. I want to attend every Greek life philanthropy and I want to do service projects. I want to add a creative writing minor and I want to stay Pre-Med. I want to be a writer and I want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a traveler, an explorer, a good daughter, student and friend.
So I knew all of those things for sure.
Maybe this is how it is supposed to be. Maybe all these desire and dreams are to push me. Maybe it’s supposed to get so overwhelming that we are forced to actually do what we want instead of just talk and think and write about it. I think that the point of stress is to motivate you to get stuff done. If I am stressed about my life and my life plans, when that is something within me saying get it done. Motivational self-talk can only take you so far, though. You’ve got to actually do what you say you want to do. Do it with class, with passion, to be sure, and, above all, don’t think you have it all figured out. If you are really honest, you don’t have anything figured out other than your next look over the edge of that endless, confusing, exhilarating Falls.
Let’s not just fall, my dear readers. Let’s throw ourselves over the edge and into whatever our futures may be. So, sure, I may not know what I am doing with my life. But I know that whatever it is, whatever career I will pursue, whatever activity I may become involved in, whatever relationship I will choose to invest in that I will not tentatively step off the edge. Edges are for leaping and I’m all in. Here goes everything. Ayo waves.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Follow Taylor Nam on Twitter: @nam_nam330
