Learning to juggle

It seems inevitable. No matter how hard I try, at the end of each year, I am forced to look back on the previous three quarters and assess them. Many memories and experiences stand out, each reminding me about all the things I missed my freshman year. The word of that year was "strength" and I will never forget the lessons I learned -- in large part because of the tattooed Celtic dragon of a reminder on my back.

More than anything, the experiences of the past year make me look forward to the future more than they invoke bittersweet feelings for the past. I, certainly, am looking forward to the summer and its absence of class, although I still am baffled as to how I can actually be looking forward to enslaving myself full-time on the other side of the country. It is opportunities like these that make all the hard work, long nights and atrocious assignments worth it -- achieving our goals.

This is not to say that most of my rewarding experiences were at work or in the classroom. Oftentimes, they were staying up incredibly too late with my roommates, eating ice cream and watching incredibly corny Disney movies, all the while laughing at every goofy thing we, or the actors, said. Or going out with friends, feeling collectively uncomfortable among strangers and preventing the one belligerent drunk friend from saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. These are the nights where inside jokes are born and revelations are made (Wild hearts can be broken). And even though many embarrassing moments come out of situations like these, none of us can deny that these are the memories most precious to us. These are the ones we wish to have more of.

Reflecting on the past seems silly at best. What, if anything, is gained? Learning from mistakes is valuable, but reliving the past is more of a sign that nothing new and exciting is taking place in life. So again, this is why I look forward. With two more years to go at the UW -- optimistic, I know -- looking back seems trivial. I suppose this is why no one asked about my ruminations. Then again, why shouldn't mine matter? Seniors rehashing about their past four, five or more years are special to those like them -- other seniors -- but can mean little to those of us waiting to experience first-hand the things they write about. Each stage of the game is equally important. Although experiences with a half-gallon of any kind are not recommended, no one should want to go through an incident like that first-hand -- ever.

Now, I make resolutions rather than ruminations, actively taking what I learned and applying to my future -- true signs of academic learning at its best. Just as I will take what I learned so long ago in microeconomics and apply it to international relations, I will take the life lessons from this year about living with three other women and apply them to the next.

All the while, I still live in the moment. Sometimes the hardest part of life is juggling past, present and future, without becoming caught up in just one. So I continue to operate under the policy of looking forward: acting in the present toward goals of the future, holding knowledge from the past.