Nine Months and Twenty-Two Blog Posts Later...

The end of the school year always gets me a bit sentimental. I teared up a little when I read the last page of my geography textbook and took my last notes for biology this year. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to miss staying up until midnight in a pile of chemistry homework or sitting in a class for an hour and a half with a bunch of people who have not quite yet established a hygienic showering schedule. However, the end of the year really makes me reflect on all the memories tied up in these short nine months and how much I have changed as a person over the past year. This year has been one of my best, and it has shaped my personality and my outlook on life a lot in several different ways.

Firstly, this year, I have learned the importance of relaxing. At the beginning of this year, I basically had my life planned out down to the clock I would own in my retirement home. I was positive that I wanted to be a pediatrician and go to Columbia and live in San Francisco for five years, then move to Shanghai, then to Dubai, etc. Now, I honestly have no idea what the fuck I am going to do with my life, and I am totally fine with that. And I am totally fine with the fact that I showed up last week not knowing I had a final in geography that day and that my passing at volleyball absolutely sucked last night. Learning to place my happiness above test scores, reputations, and expectations has probably been the biggest thing I have learned this year, and I'm glad I have.

In addition to being extremely stressed and slightly stuck-up at the beginning of the year, I was also pretty scared of people, especially those older than me, and I had horrible social skills. I remember sitting in my chemistry class on the first day of school at a table with a bunch of sophomores and thinking to myself, "Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact." Eventually, I did make eye contact, and a handful of the people in my class who I was originally terrified of have now become some of my best friends. I even sit next to a senior cheerleader in my bio class who I actually talk to, so... *insert sassy girl with hand emoji here*.

Finally, this year, I have learned to follow my dreams. (Sorry, I couldn't find a less cheesy way to say that.) I started this blog at the beginning of the year as a "what if" sort of bucket list. I wanted to travel when I got older, but never really considered going anywhere in the mean time, because who has that sort of time? However, sometime in the middle of the year, I realized that if I wasn't going to pursue my interests now, I probably wasn't going to later. So I applied for a two-and-a-half-week service project in India, and this July, I am going to go volunteer in a leprosy colony in Chennai (which I actually talked about wanting to do in a post earlier this year). I also signed up for paragliding lessons and a number of other things that were previously just fun ideas that I had. 

Where I'm going in India. I'm also going to see Jaipur, Agra,
and Delhi after in the North! Maybe I'll do a blog post while
I'm there!
Image Courtesy of: Britannica Kids

Ninth grade has been a wonderful year for me, and I have changed a lot as a person. I hope I can carry the lessons I've learned with me into the future.