There are a lot of things I have never expected or prepared to learn in college. The first being that college isn't just academics but exemplifies the things you learn outside of the classroom. College magnifies what you learn about yourself.

Fear prevented me from pursuing my goals before. I stressed over the outcomes of every decision. I find myself now unconsciously diving into things(good and legal) because...why not? There isn't much of a thought to do things I'm interested in, which is reassuring. I know now I can approach life normally which I wasn't always used to, or I'd never believed that I would. I always expected to forfeit my chances to make an impression on the world because of my anxiety. In college, I'm constantly being surprised.

I learned in a single month something I couldn't fathom that last 18 years of my life - my place in a world of chaos. Sometimes I won't have the power to fix everyone's problems, the flaws in society, or the flaws in myself - and that is okay. Since I've been living with two roommates, the combination of our friends constantly triples and intertwines with each other. Drama is inexhaustible. You can't snuff it out like a candle and you cannot run away from it. Drama shapes you by how you handle it. If you run away from it, you shoot yourself in the foot, inhibiting yourself from true growth as a human being. "You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens," as Rumi writes. Don't shut down - you're the only one that suffers. You inhibit the potential of a beautiful relationship from flowering.

I was wrong too. Back home, it was my self-appointed role to rectify situation - willingly stowing away the coals of other people's problems. When drama arrived, we didn't know what to do. I didn't realize the desperation for a remedy only exacerbated the situation. College taught me that some problems cannot be fixed. When problems can't be fixed, you keep going.

Sometimes you will dredge to the ends of your soul to make sense of the actions of another, or to make things right.Sometimes you can't make things right and you have to let go. Allowing sorrow to fester fixes nothing and is unprofitable. A friend answered my calls of distress with means of escape...not escaping from the problem at hand but an escape from my mind. This friend aided in untying my hands, stowing away the festering problem I couldn't fix. he brought me to the spray of the sea, the wind in my hair created by the bikes powered by our knees. This wind lifted me up into the trees where I sat in a hammock greeted by the constellations. The problems were far away, at bay. Mostly I left them on the pier when I dived into the ocean. The water cleansed me, and the salt replaced my worries. We never planned for these activities, the thing is we never objected-- which allowed me to stray from the webs of my mind, my schedule, and my goals all tangled together. I realized I spend too much time planning my life than living it. I don't want to live a life I don't remember. Now I pay attention.