Good evening, friends.
As promised last week, today we’re talking the things I’ve learned since the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad first semester of my collegiate experience. I wanted to label them as “things that would have made MIT work” but that’s just flat out untrue. In fact, the first item on the list made MIT financially impossible and is the main reason I left. These are all things I learned by months and years of experience, and a lot of them are learned in the body. Knowing them in my brain would have only helped so much. I was eighteen. I did not know how to be in the world. I had to learn (and am still very much learning - hello, motherhood) by experience. Without further ado:
10 Lessons Since Cambridge
I am not cut out for military service.
In hindsight this feels so obvious, but apparently some things, like yurt life and the Marine Corps, I just gotta try before being convinced they aren’t for me.
I need a certain amount of rest…
Between my introversion and ROTC early mornings, it might have been a good idea to have a singles dorm room where I could completely relax.
…and rest is more than sleep.
I slept a lot during the semester, but it was the restless sleep of depression and my anxious brain rarely turned off.
I need regular interactions where I feel seen.
Despite what I just said about introversion, as a human I need eye contact and laughter and commiseration on the daily.
Most things that feel like forever are seasons that will end.
See: loneliness, homesickness, pregnancy, the fresh newborn stage, and impossible seasons of work.
I like black tea.
A minor plot point: I found this out later in college and it would have been so pleasant to live in Boston in the winter if I enjoyed hot tea like I do now.
I am safe.
This is something that I am still learning to know in my body and was near impossible to properly feel when living in a big city for the first time.
You are stronger and more resilient than you know.
Always, always, always.
It only gets harder to ask for help. You are not dumb or weak or the first person to struggle this way.
I got a message from a fellow ROTC midshipman after I left the unit. He said he was sorry to see me go and also that everyone was surprised because they thought I was one of the best midshipmen. I didn’t show anyone how I was struggling until I had broken down.
Almost anything can be solved by breaking it down into smaller bits.
Again, I’m not saying I could have “handled” it - but it's nearly always better when we can name our problems and then make them smaller and more manageable.
Until next week,
Love,
Amy
It took me a long time to figure out who I was too. I was terribly shy and couldn't make decisions.