I had anticipated the likes of this year, and this semester. Even from April, I could see the dark clouds rolling in from the distance, the cackle of thunder booming in the far distance.
Like anyone else making these kinds of decisions and commmitments, you think about whats to come. You imagine the long hours, days, and weeks spent on a class schedule heightened with the difficulty of the coursework. You prepare for another season of recruiting, but knowing full well that this time it will be different kind of beast you need to dance with. But, you also remember the excitement that each year here at the University brings you -- all the events, memories, and opportunities laid out before you. All of the new people you can meet, and all of the late nights you spend together bonding. Hey, maybe you'll even find someone special.
Still, it does not prepare you for whats to come.
The panic attacks set in well before the start of the semester. Infrequent at first, and not as severe. You are unsure of your rap sheet, whether you really have enough on paper to compete neck-to-neck with the "cs" megabuffs of the department. Because you quickly realize, competitiveness is a real thing - and like the college application season we went through as high school seniors, everyone has their own agenda. Very few people are truly your friends.
Before you know it, you are neck deep in class material and don't know how to swim. These homework assignments take days instead of hours to complete. What? These classes seem to be more intensive than you previously expected. Your part-time tutoring job is going to suffer.
And then there's recruiting. The career fair. This is when you realize, this is real, and you can't turn back. Its time to put together a final resume, polish yourself, practice your skills, and prepare for whats to come, whatever happens. All that matters, is getting recognized. If you can catch a recruiter's attention, then you are in control of what happens next. You're all in.
The panic attacks become more frequent.
Your mentality begins to change. You are getting interviews, but the paranoia fails to fade. General Electric would like to talk to you at Cafe Medici tomorrow! What time are you free? Dell wants you to attend their on campus interviews this Friday. Please select a time. The rejections also start to arrive. It doesn't bother you at first -- of course not every company will like you. The idea warps over time. You're not trying to lose small, you're trying to win big. Its not about getting any company, its about getting the company. Its about getting the location. Its getting your dream. Google, Microsoft, whatever it is. Seattle. Seattle, oh god, what you would do to be there. It becomes your fever. Your mentality begins to change. The sky seems to be filled with dark clouds everyday. The panic attacks set in every thirty minutes now, and everytime it happens you need to excuse yourself. Its becoming harder to focus. Because the biggest "what if" -- the "what if" you wish to never encounter, the "what if" you wouldn't know what to do -- is if you can't make it. What if the risk never pays off? What if you lose it all.
What if you made the wrong decision.
Your mentality begins to change, but for the worse. The worst realization is that you are very aware of this change.
Schoolwork keeps you up late at night now. Fifteen hours feels like twenty. Tieing that together with the efforts of recruiting preparation and interview practice, you get an average of three hours of sleep every night. Each week breaks you, and you look forward to the weekend. Come Saturday, however, you realize that the work does not rest. There is no time to rest. To even keep up with the curriculum you need to devote every waking hour to your assignments. It becomes a cycle. And don't even think about dropping a fucking class. You want to graduate? Make sure you pass all of your classes. There is no margin. Try looking forward to next weekend. Maybe you'll have better luck.
Its been almost a month since you have posted hours for your tutoring job, yet no manager has contacted you. So, technically, are you still employed? No matter, if they don't ask, you shall not tell. It's been a long time since you have really spent some time with friends. A really long time. You quickly understand that idea of everyone having their own agenda. Most people don't bother to contact you. They have their own friends, and whatever role you played a part of in the circle has quickly been replaced by another. And you don't have time to talk to your mom on the phone for hours at a time like you used to. Its pretty lonely nowadays. As a matter of fact, when is the last time you've been to the gym? You've definitely slimmed down, and you barely eat two meals a day.
The stress of preparing for interviews takes its toll. You are a nervous wreck, but miraculously perform well during each interview. The communication skills you have developed over summer shine with an interviewer but are shit with your friends. You can't hold a substantial conversation with anyone anymore. The excitement that the beginning of the school year brings has faded a long time ago. You reflect back on the sacrifices you've made, and are horrified to realize everything you have missed. You gave up Texas Bhangra. You gave up Blazers. Your favorite artists have come and gone through Austin, and you did not even think about seeing them. ACL was a goal. Finish your last year by going hard, right? That was a tough one to pass up on. You won't get another chance like the one you had this year.
Some of your friends fall in love. It would be nice to have someone to open up to. You lost count of how many times you just wanted to hide from the world and bury your face in the neck of someone else. It feels like most people's lives are moving quickly along, while you remain stagnant, unable to do anything but watch with dismay.
You have made a lot of sacrifices. Everything you wanted to do, you had to give up. All of the moments you could have spent with friends, you've had to let go. These thoughts hit you suddenly, and deliberately. Sometimes in the shower, or sometimes when you walk to class. It hits you hard, and you can't help but cry.
At this point, all you want to do is go home.
Your mind is broken. You have become unemotional, and the extreme tiredness is a daily familiarity. The strain begins to show on the surface, but you do not care about hiding it anymore. Interviews continue to be cruel, and continue to widen the cracks of your mentality. No one has reached out to you with a concrete opportunity.
You are out of fuel.
You are certain you made the wrong decision.
You are out of fuel.
There is no other option. This is the path you chose to take, and this is the path you will keep to if its the last thing you do. This is a decision you made, not only for yourself, but for your parents. You prove your worth. You prove that you can make it, because really you can't afford not to. When you have nothing in the tank to give for yourself, you give everything you have for your friends, your family. Your future. You give everything you have for making them proud, you give everything you have for who you are and what you have been through. You give everything you have because you started out with nothing and you were given nothing and you worked for everything you have gotten ever since you can fucking remember and you work for everyone that decided to fucking walk out on you and stop caring and you give everything you have so the people that try to come back in your life fucking cant and you give everything you can because of what the last two FUCKING years have done to you and for all the FUCKING people that FUCKING FELL THROUGH and you use the the FUCKING RAGE from ALL YOUR FAILURES to make something out of your FUCKING SELF for ONCE--
And then you get hit by lightning.
...
Fall finally starts to arrive, a month later than it probably should have. Its nice to have bearable weather for once. The heat became tiring.
The cool wind feels all too familiar to the Pacific breeze.
Getting your first offer changes things. Getting your first offer at a company you wanted really changes things. But rather than being relieved, you feel even more hungry for what you can achieve. But the paranoia largely dissapates. You still get panic attacks, but far less frequently than every thirty minutes, thank god. And when they do happen, you have become used to it. You can contain it.
It doesn't change anything. But it does change things.
You have something to show for your efforts. Is 'efforts' the right word? Somehow, you don't feel so scared about the future anymore. You still need to hear back from Google and Microsoft. What if you don't get either?
You are quite a different person than you were in August.
This is the first week you did not have a pressing matter to attend to for every waking moment of your day. Its gifted you with the opportunity to spend a night out with friends. Its been a long time since you've done that. A really long time. It feels really good to be able to do something like that without a heavy consicous.
You can breathe.
You get your speech back. Conversation does not become static anymore, and you begin to open up to those close to you, and your parents. Thats an important part. For the first time in a long time, they understand your position, and what you have been through.
You begin to eat more healthy. And by that, I mean more than two meals a day. Now, you eat more than three meals a day. You go to the gym more regularly. You've strengthened your friendship with a few people important in your life. Keep working on that. Moreover, you've realized who is important and who is not, and you prioritize as such. Perhaps your life is still pretty lonely - you still do not have as much time as other people do to really devote to hanging out, but this time around you are happier. You realize who is valuable to have as a companion, and you are swift to extend a helping hand whenever you can. Its earned you a chair position in an organization. This is what networking feels like.
Ah, but the battle is not over. The dream is still alive. Did you think you were done with interviews? Classes have not eased up. You are not concerned with your GPA too much anymore. It wont matter after a year in the industry.
What you have been through, everything that has broken you down, has turned you around. You are still worn down, and tired -- the deep sleep you have for eleven hours on weekdays, skipping classes, should attest to that. You are worn down but no longer broken. Your body pumps diesel now, and you are much stronger. Your mind is sharp, no matter how tired you become these days. You have scraped the ocean floor consistently for the past two months, and now you've blasted out of the water, star-bound.
Because you understood, no matter how tired you are, how much you can not give to the cause anymore, you press onwards.
......
This year has been fast. And slow.
Graduating early is not an easy decision to make nor should it herald me any kind of special treatment. I'm still the same person as the next, trying to make my way in a world of doubt. But its opened my eyes to advice and opportunity in every corner. I have grown in more ways than I could have imagined, and probably more so than if I had decided to stay for a fourth year.
It doesn't matter if you're graduating early, or graduating late. It does not matter how old you are, where you have come from. All that matters is how much you're willing put on the line.
Taking risks is a scary thing. Failure is a scary thing. If you want to succeed, be prepared to walk up to failure and stare it in the eye.
If you can't, you don't deserve anything greater than mediocrity. And you wont get anything more than mediocrity.
With the end of the semester comes my very last. Who knows the kind of adventure that the new year will bring, and who I may meet, or what I will endure. But I am just a little more prepared of what to come, and I can't help but smile at the thought of what is in store ahead of me.
But before that, I really just can't wait to go home and get some sleep.
The dark clouds look quite threatening, don't they? Have no fear, they will pass.
areudirty
pixelskylines
stormborns
dailybridgerton
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
titsay
discoholicmusic
amandla
