Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their carvings. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
If the previous year was a bumpy uphill climb to the peak of a mountain, my junior year was the lurching, I-think-I-forgot-my-parachute free fall that followed. When I think of this year, I picture losing my footing on an icy overhang, staggering and tumbling and falling down the rocky face, only to find out that I could glide on the wind and take to the sky. At the start of the school year, I had to navigate a period of personal hardship that shook me to my core, and my mental health suffered. At the same time, a sequence of unrelated events seemed to join together to reach an overwhelming crescendo; I realized I was not getting anywhere in the lab I was working in, I was completely burnt out from obsessing over grades, and I was hit with a wave of sudden awareness that I had lost sight of who I wanted to be. It was a perfect storm and for a while I felt immobilized with panic, but eventually I knew what I needed to do. I sought out support from my incredible friends and family, got help, quit my jobs, dropped a class, and made a commitment to start listening to my intuition from that moment on. It sounds fairly simple in hindsight, but it was a massive step for me at the time. I let go of the expectations that I had to be a certain way, prove myself, or follow a particular path, and instead decided to focus on healing and personal growth, everything started to fall into place. For the rest of the year, I focused on doing things that were genuinely important to me-- spending time with friends and family, picking up old hobbies, reading, pursuing creative outlets, getting outside as much as possible-- and I became happier and more confident with each new day. I ended up finding a new research position that restored my love for science, and I finally figured out what was truly important to me. By the end of this year, I finally felt free to take control of my life and do whatever made me happy, and this happiness spilled over into every other part of my life from my academics to my social life and my physical health. This year had some extreme ups and downs, but through it all I experienced more growth than either of the previous years combined. It was a turning point in my search for identity and my understanding of success, and I've kept that momentum going ever since.
If the previous year was a bumpy uphill climb to the peak of a mountain, my junior year was the lurching, I-think-I-forgot-my-parachute free fall that followed. When I think of this year, I picture losing my footing on an icy overhang, staggering and tumbling and falling down the rocky face, only to find out that I could glide on the wind and take to the sky. At the start of the school year, I had to navigate a period of personal hardship that shook me to my core, and my mental health suffered. At the same time, a sequence of unrelated events seemed to join together to reach an overwhelming crescendo; I realized I was not getting anywhere in the lab I was working in, I was completely burnt out from obsessing over grades, and I was hit with a wave of sudden awareness that I had lost sight of who I wanted to be. It was a perfect storm and for a while I felt immobilized with panic, but eventually I knew what I needed to do. I sought out support from my incredible friends and family, got help, quit my jobs, dropped a class, and made a commitment to start listening to my intuition from that moment on. It sounds fairly simple in hindsight, but it was a massive step for me at the time. I let go of the expectations that I had to be a certain way, prove myself, or follow a particular path, and instead decided to focus on healing and personal growth, everything started to fall into place. For the rest of the year, I focused on doing things that were genuinely important to me-- spending time with friends and family, picking up old hobbies, reading, pursuing creative outlets, getting outside as much as possible-- and I became happier and more confident with each new day. I ended up finding a new research position that restored my love for science, and I finally figured out what was truly important to me. By the end of this year, I finally felt free to take control of my life and do whatever made me happy, and this happiness spilled over into every other part of my life from my academics to my social life and my physical health. This year had some extreme ups and downs, but through it all I experienced more growth than either of the previous years combined. It was a turning point in my search for identity and my understanding of success, and I've kept that momentum going ever since.
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