During the final session of my COM 103 class last semester, my professor gave us one key piece of advice: embrace the chaos.
She knew that the pandemic didn’t make for the smoothest couple of years and reminded us to give ourselves a break every once in a while if we were struggling.
On days much like today, the phrase is imprinted in my brain.
My first day of college classes was nothing short of nerve-wracking. I woke up bright and early, even though my ENG 237 class didn’t begin until 10 a.m. I remember feeling like I had grown up too fast, like a lost kid who suddenly stumbled upon young adulthood. But deep down, I was ready.
I sat at Founder’s Circle for half an hour while my best friend Makira Davis and I took turns snapping first-day-of-school pictures. Later, I sent them to my family group chat, quite creatively captioning them “First day of 13th grade,” with a series of smiling emojis.
I had so many expectations coming into college — expectations of what it would be like, the type of social life I’d have, the kind of grades I’d earn. In some ways, college has been all that I’ve hoped for and more. That isn’t always the case, though. Sometimes everything is up in the air and nothing is what I imagined.
In high school, I went from class to class for six hours, got to see my friends throughout the day and knew the majority of people in my grade. My biggest worry back in those days was passing AP U.S. History and getting my crush to acknowledge my existence.
There was never any worrying about who I was or who I wanted to be. Things are different now. There’s more responsibility, more time spent alone doing homework and, quite frankly, more time spent reassuring myself that everything isn’t falling apart.
When I arrived at Bradley, I expected to be a force.
But now that I’m here, I often find myself caught up in the idea of who I want to be — this vision of what kind of person I see myself becoming, the kind of habits I want to have and how I should interact with the world around me. When I don’t completely embody that vision, I’m hit with an overwhelming feeling that I’m failing at everything in life.
In reality, I’m not failing. I always end up realizing that I never was.
I know that it’s okay to have expectations. It’s perfectly reasonable to want things to be a certain way and to have goals and ambitions. The problems tend to arise when I expect to just be one version of myself.
Sometimes, I am a force. I complete all of my assignments, finish the various assigned readings, spend time with my friends, call home and maybe squeeze in some Netflix. With any luck, I might even submit my article for The Scout on time. But I realize I might not always be on top of everything.
Without a doubt, there are going to be days that I’m a mess. On those days, I don’t get out of bed until it’s absolutely necessary, I don’t see the face of anyone but my roommate and I barely crack open a textbook.
The fact of the matter is, I have to be willing to accept myself at every point in this still new and crazy journey. I have to accept who I am today just as much as I set goals for who I want to be in the future.
Things around me are constantly changing, and so am I. Every day is a chance to learn and put my best foot forward — whether or not I’m completely being the version of myself that I have in my head.
Before I can embrace the chaos in the world we live in, I must first embrace the chaos in my everyday life.
