My primary desire is to know about myself in relation to the world. Fortunately, this means I’ve bypassed the illusion that the only indication of success is money and power. Unfortunately, in the middle of junior year I got fed up with constantly analyzing everything that I do and stopped thinking for two years. By this I mean that I interacted with people somewhat naturally, had an epic romance, and let myself go on auto-pilot to see what would happen. That experiment having ended poorly, I’ve found a new place where I’m forced to search for a balance between alive and aware.

Academically, I’ve always done enough work to get A’s in honors classes, whatever that actually indicates, but I do not do as much as I believe I “should.” When I was younger, my mom would help me overachieve on projects, but I didn’t try very hard with other things. In eighth grade, I made friends with the kids in the gifted program. Today they are my best friends, but at my last day of school shindig in 2003, the two girls I respected most told me I would “never be a geek”. It was a silly interaction, but it affected me. I wanted to be one of them, and I was smart, so why not? But I knew I was different: as a child, I read The Princess Diaries, not Lord of the Rings; I watched Charmed, not Star Trek; I played with Barbies, not plastic horses and paper swords.

Throughout high school, when my friends were doing their Biology projects, I was journaling. I’ve never tried to appease my parents by saying I’ll go to medical school because they encouraged me to find my own path, not live one of theirs. Now I’m at college, choosing my own path from every conceivable direction. Because there is so much to discover, I will not assume that the first subject to strike my fancy is the one for me. I need to explore everything; I need to find as many forms of beauty as I can comprehend. I went to college out of state to be able to do this. I intended to sever all my ties and be free to see what I could make of myself, by myself.

So imagine my surprise when, a month into Fall Quarter, I find myself in a relationship with a lovely (and geeky) fellow who lives down the hall from me. When I say “find myself,” I do mean I was not thinking, and I do mean it is something into which I stumbled, but when there’s a fascinating person with whom I connect, I’m not going to shrink away. I value love, and this is one of those relationships. This creates a conflict, because now neither a date nor a book is as enjoyable as it could be. I value love, but this is the wrong time. I value love, but shouldn’t I be more of a person before I get into another serious relationship?

This year, I am learning moderation. It’s a valuable skill to have, and at this school, with this person, I couldn’t be trying to balance two more wonderful things. When I challenge my negative beliefs about how I’m doing at college, I realize that I am a pretty impressive lady. I’m not a learning hermit, but I doubt that would have been fulfilling in the first place. I am growing in so many ways, and I own myself more than ever before. To be honest, I am thrilled.

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