This story is written whilst in a stage of frenzied days and relentless schedules. In this non-stop whirlwind I try to grab a breath of air in between hurried steps to find what I’m missing. I’ve probably sprinted a good 5000 miles without ever looking back because turning around would be slowing down. But I’ve realized that a race with no end is like falling into a bottomless pit. Ask me what I want, and to be honest, I don’t really know. From my days of following a set of checkboxes on a form for success to my budding consciousness on what I should really be valuing, let me tell you a story.

 

 

Let me tell you my story picked from the words I’ve written over the years.

 

Let me show you how a driven girl who wrote about ambition and success metrics turned to reflection and finally, to perspective. 

 

 

2011

The adjustment period for college never really impacted me much. It was just another level to reach with the same goals and objectives from all the other levels I had already passed through. There were clear steps to success, and provided that I accomplished them, I would have success.

 

Slightly aloof, in my first college writing class, I scripted diligent papers on the Odyssey. Follow the prompt; tell us about Achilles and Hector, Agamemnon adn Menelaus. I had great theses, used quotes efficiently, and conducted diligent research. I got A’s in the courses without too much effort, and proceeded to pretty much forget everything I’d written. On this trek to tell you a story made of my own words, I couldn’t even remember what these essays were about.

 

In that first year writing course, I chose to write an essay focusing on the reasons various heroes in the Odyssey went to war. I trotted Hector, Achilles, and Agamemnon through the paragraphs, dissecting their interior motives with a collage of examples and a barrage of quotes spread across five pages of writing. In summary, I declared that they all fought for a combination of love and glory. In quite a pedantic manner, I laid out a fairly airtight essay explaining that Hector fought for the glory of Troy and for the love of his family, that Achilles fought for the glory of being a solider and for the love of his friend, and finally, that even Agamemnon fought for love of his brother and for the glory of spoils. I checked off all the little boxes, received my grade, and promptly forgot my arguments until recently, when I fished this paper out of the deep recesses of my computer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012

Even Sophomore year, this trend continued. Looking back, I realize exactly how detrimental actions driven by short term motivations can be. In a Russian Literature class, I wrote an essay on the Russian Revolution. This essay was in a very nonstandard structure, per the request of the instructor, but having treated it as just another assignment, I find myself befuddled when I turn back to it. It gave several different opinions on the Russian Revolution, but more importantly, it raised a lot of questions. I questioned the people who wrote about the Russian Revolution , and I questioned the true motives of the masses against the elite. In fact, I seemed to ask many more questions than I gave answers and, now, I find myself just as curious about it as perhaps I was when I left off. But because I pursued this as merely a grade among many, I left the essay with questions and declined to comment further. I most certainly kick myself now for not looking into this further when I had the resources for digging deeper.

 

 

 

This is an example of what I had always done, what had always been expected. There was no like or dislike, it was simply another requirement to check off on the way to something bigger. As much as I loved the reading, the writing was mechanical. As much as the topics were interesting, I was writing about someone else. I was writing for someone else, something else and as a consequence, it never wrapped up into something bigger and it never hit home with me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2013

 

I walked into English 325 junior year, read some interesting pieces and critiqued a lot of others. I was ready to dissect and conquer this new challenge, ready to approach it the same way I had always done: identify what needed to be done, doing it well, and moving on.

 

The very first prompt asked us to record an event in our lives and to transcribe it.

This was different.

I wasn’t sure I had heard right when he said "Transcribe a recording." I even raised my hand to clarify the prompt. This isn’t writing, this is recording. But if it’s part of the checklist, I guess I’ll do it. He wanted us to take that actual recording and commit it to paper, word for word, embellished just slightly, to make a story.

 

You’d think, for someone with an overflowing schedule, that that would be easy. But far from being a breeze, I searched my calendar forwards and backwards before I finally settled, not so confidently, on Akpsi rush.

 

Later at home, hearing my own voice echoing out of my phone, I stopped and thought about what I was doing and what I sounded like. For so long, I’d been told to stop and think, to take a little time for myself, but I’d always demurred, citing a lack of time. I’d always been in the habit of pushing through schedules and feeding the events back  into this infinite loop of success criteria and accomplishments I seem to have attached myself to.

 

But forced to listen to my own voice, I thought about how silly we all sounded. I listened to myself standing there with a circle of doe-eyed freshmen around me, spouting out “We are the perfect blend of the professional and the social.” We were kids playing adults playing at real life teaching other kids the right path. I put this piece on paper, titled it Remember Me, and started to look at myself a little skeptically.

 

For those thirty minutes, my voice listed off past internships and experiences, telling hopeful freshmen how great of a community Akpsi was and how we would prepare them for the big bad world. We would help them write cover letters and resumes. We would show them the ropes of interviewing and introduce them to this incredible network of alumni. We would turn them into a cog in the machine, shiny and buffed up, the next leaders of the business world.

 

But what happened to enjoying freshmen year and meeting people? What happened to getting involved in other clubs and experiencing some diversity? What happened to a life outside of a career and a motive other than professional success?

 

This reflection was new. For the first time in a long time, I came to a standstill and looked around. I didn't like what I found and I realized how important it was for me to figure out what experiences I would choose to value and what type of person I would like to become.

 

As a consequence, my next two pieces focused on this idea of losing time.

 

I was particularly proud of It Is.

 

Starting from elementary school, I played my life up to current date and saw how I was constantly worried about growing up, about losing time. But in this process of worrying, I really did lose time. There is so much in the present that worrying about it will only make it slip faster. The only way to remember is to live in the moment 100%. Realizing this, when the story reached present day, I pitted a wiser future self against my present self. I had them engage, and, for once, my future self decided to put this harried life in perspective and pointed out everything my current self was missing out on.

 

With this realization and perspective in hand, I then retold my story backwards. I started in the present day and moved back to elementary school, focusing on the moments that really made those years special and left old worries behind.

 

The next piece, It is Imperative, began to explore the values of those around me, and consequently, some of my own values.

 

In the business school, we’re sometimes so tunnel vision and one-version-of-success driven. Even the school seems to have realized this uncanny trait its students tend to have. It desperately launched speakers and professors our way, telling us to “find the passion in our lives.” Not surprisingly, most of these passion talks were ignored by the student body. For me, however, there were two individuals who stood out above all others. Their stories emphasized the importance of balance between a personal life and a career. They showed us that satisfaction and happiness don’t come from prestige and money. They were desperate for us to listen, feel, and understand. There was so much experience thrown at us, and it was terrifying to see how many of us ignored it. Reading this essay now, I can still hear those two speakers standing in front of us, desperately trying to reach us through this fog of money, success, and reputation.

 

***

 

Later that year, Writing 220 asked me, “Why do you write?”

 

I thought it’d be easy, but, staring at that blank Word document before me, many hours passed before I could finally commit words to paper.

 

I write to learn more about myself, to synthesize some of the lessons that I should be taking away from my experiences, and to catalogue some of the advice that I’ve been receiving. It’s very easy to blow past well-sounded advice in the moment, but when caught on paper and presented together, it seems just a little more coherent. It’s very easy to toss each moment away and then struggle to remember later, but if I write it down right now, so that when I look back on it, I can see how I’ve changed, and whether I like it or not. It's easy to tell other people who you are, but it's more difficult to lie to myself. I write to remind myself of who I want to be and how I should get there.

 

From a career of obedient essays exploring Roman classics, the Russian Revolution, and Polish poets, I’ve finally started writing more about myself and about the topics that keep my mind whirling even when I’m tired. Right now, it’s all about losing time and getting stuck in all the unimportant trivialities while letting the real moments fly by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2014

Everything I’ve written in the last two years centered on this idea of running through our time in college and through our childhoods, only to grasp at something we can never achieve because we’ve failed to define what it is we want. 

 

Now, I want to spread this message again, but in a different genre. I want my message to enter the field of the fictional short story. I want to distance these stories from my own experiences and I want them to tell these messages from three different narratives. I want to remove the essence of the memoir and to have the stories show this message through environment, plot, and character. In the fictional short story, I hope to make this message more generalized and applicable to people in all races of life.  

 

So, the writer driven by success metrics was stopped in her tracks by an act of reflection, and as a consequence, started writing to share these lessons on enjoying the moment and valuing balance in life. In the latest installment, her hand turns to conveying these messages in a new medium with new tactics.

 

Here explores the stories of Jane, Tom, and Anne, each at a different point in their lives with different perspectives. The three of them combined are a culmination of what young college graduates are today and what they will be in the future. Together, they share a story that shows how frazzled we can be and how daunting the present may seem. But they also show us that the future is so much more than this one instance in time and that the present is so much more valuable than an infinite list of success criteria.

 

These stories represent who I am and who I would like to be. They catalogue the lessons and messages both that I’ve discovered through my reflections, and that I've deciphered from the teachings of others who watch our struggles and try to help. These others are the people that have knowledge from years and from experience, and are perhaps, the very same people we will be thirty years down the road.

 

I hope that in thirty years, I will look back on these messages I’m telling myself and agree. I hope that I will remember the moments and experiences that matter over the promotions and checklists that, when allowed to, can run away with our valuable time. I hope that in thirty years, I will be telling someone some version of these lessons and that they will understand, see, and hopefully live the same message.  

 

In thirty years, I hope that I am still writing to capture messages and to reminder myself of what is important and of whom I want to be.