And just like that, another year has gone by.
On the day I went home, I saw the last of my roommates off in the early morning, eyes still heavy with sleep. After one parting cry of "Whoa — you're heading out this early?", the dorm was down to just me.
I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but with no one left to split the burden of feeding the mosquitoes, I suffered their full attention alone. Sleep was hopeless; might as well get up. I scrolled my phone for a while and found it thoroughly dull.
"So that's a whole year. That was fast." I said it to the empty dorm room, and nobody chimed in.
In my year here there had been endless clowning around, days and nights spent in the company of drafting paper, and holidays and weekends that simply did not exist. It was, honestly, a little wretched and a little unfair — but full, and fun.
I sat on my bed with nothing to do and, without quite knowing why, felt very sad. I wanted to call someone and talk, but I couldn't think of who.
I know: a year goes by in a blink, and four years aren't so long either.
And so here I am now, sitting at home, joining the me of that morning to look back over and sort out my first year of college.
On the first day after military training ended, I published a post with a thoroughly earnest title — "A New Beginning, A New Starting Point" — to express everything I was thinking and hoping for at the time.
The real pity is that most of the hopes I wrote down on that account — for a rich, colorful college life — no longer stand much chance of coming true. Scrolling back through a year of my WeChat Moments, I found that nearly all of them were about studying. Terrifying. Terrifying.
Speaking of studying: my grades this year put me near the top of the class, which counts as a fairly big harvest. The regret is that I seem to have swallowed several tons of knowledge without the time to chew any of it properly. My thinking has widened considerably, yet I still can't work through a problem the way my teachers do — I can't shake the suspicion that I may just have the outward shell of a scholar and nothing inside it.
College teachers come in every variety. In the fall I had an English teacher who taught on autopilot; in the spring, a sketching teacher whose aesthetic judgment I frankly doubted, and a technical-drawing teacher who couldn't really draw. But I met good ones too: the terrific lecturer for green-space system planning, the botany course packed impossibly full, and the Introduction to Design teacher who gave me real direction... College teachers don't hover over you. In a sense, anyone who offers timely professional insight and guidance at the moment you're lost already deserves your boundless gratitude. This year I'm grateful to have met a few genuinely conscientious teachers.
The people in my class remain not especially familiar to me, though I've at least learned that they're lively and fun. The ones I know best are still my three roommates — different ambitions, each lovable in their own way. Going to class together, helping each other out, needling each other: all of it long since habit.
I'm still not one for talking, still coming and going on my own. Still lonely, too — that hasn't improved in the slightest — but I am gradually learning to keep my own company. On the twenty-four-hour green-skinned train home, no one traveled with me and no one kept me company, and lonely as that was, I felt not a trace of unhappiness about it. I suppose I've grown used to it. Besides, the people you get to watch on a long train ride, in all their variety, are endlessly interesting.
Off the train, feet on familiar ground, the weariness lifted all at once. The key clicked a few times in the lock, the door to home swung open, and there stood a table of familiar dishes — and what could the word "lonely" possibly mean after that?
My goals for after undergrad are now fairly clear and firm; I have a rough direction for where I should be in three years and how to get there. Sometimes I still slip into confusion and anxiety, unsure whether the goals I've set are reasonable, or reachable at all. All I can do is quietly cheer myself on once more: put in the effort where effort is due, and that is enough — the days ahead are long; just keep doing the good work.
Well then. That's one year. See you in sophomore year.