What Sophomore Year Taught Me

This is another in the "Seriously Serious Series... Seriously." Procrastinating studying for finals has left me with plenty of vacant brain space for reflection. So I started thinking about the things I learned this year that really mattered.

1)   An A+ is great, but in the end, it’s merely a letter, black and white, filling up a small box on a worthless sheet of paper. In ten years, regardless of where you are, what will that document even matter? Life doesn’t grade you based on your memorization of the quadratic formula or the conjugation of verbs in plucuamperfecto. I started off this year going entirely out of my way to be alone so I could study in isolation. And guess what? It sucked. Grades were great, but my life felt like Hell on a stick. Why? Because my life was grades and nothing else. I bawled when I got an 81 on a math test. Idiotic? Yes. Overdramatic? Yes ². Yet somehow, I was blind to that fact, and in retrospect, if I could, I’d send my future self back to pick my past self up off the floor… and shake some sense into her. Who in the future is going to care that I know how to multiply radicals? Which speaking of, I should probably be studying right now (I have my Algebra II final Wednesday). I don’t know what triggered it, but somehow I came out of my shell. I started being social again. I stopped seeking out the emptiest room. I ate with friends that I had passed up the opportunity to lunch with all year. And then something kind of amazing happened. I turned into someone different. Someone more like myself. And to be perfectly honest, that’s the most valuable thing I’ve learned to do all year.