The aftermath.

"I've just settled into the glass half-empty, made myself at home."- Vienna Teng

I forget what life was like before senior year.  Not that that's a bad thing.  It's not like senior year was bad - it's definitely not that.  I'm glad it happened, and I would be significantly more upset if I did not have a senior year.  Last week, I read a letter that I wrote freshman year, addressed from me to me. 

I read about all of the jokes and music and television shows I used to like.  I don't like the same things anymore.  Life goes on, TV shows get canceled, and new albums are released.  I've grown up. 

I found out how cute and innocent I was.  Something I wanted to do in the next four years: to go to a dance with a girl.  What I wanted to be when I grew up: I don't know.  What I wanted to major in: everything.  

I read about all of the goals I had.  My academic goals, my extracurricular goals... I wrote as if I were aiming low, but as it turns out, I failed almost every single one of them.  I was wildly ambitious, too much for my own good.  But, as a result, I was happy because I was hopeful of what could happen and the life I could have.

I used to be so optimistic.  I was so happy and playful and wonderfully innocent and blindly ambitious.  Life wasn't nearly as good as it is now, but I was happier because I was hopeful.  It's a striking difference to how am now.  It turns out, meritocracy only goes so far. I thought that I would be entering college like I would enter high school, but I failed to consider how unknowing of the world I used to be.