Build off what you've done well

This past Thursday morning, during our weekly advisory period at school, Will Slotnick, who ran the Wellness Collaborative I posted about earlier in November revisited our grade.  He was coaching us about the transition between middle and high school.  He continued talking about solutions to fighting stress, as it is the leading cause for people trying out drugs and alcohol which lead to addictions.  However, before Mr. Slotnick began talking about stress factors, drugs and alcohol, he began by asking my grade a question.  What are we going to miss about middle school.  

After hearing our various responses, Mr. Slotnick began talking about the transition between middle school and high school.  There was one thing he mentioned that struck me.  I was always consciously aware of it but Mr. Slotnick put what I’d conceptually understood into words.  He said that high school is almost like starting new and fresh.  You get a new, clean slate.  Teachers don’t know you very well and there are many new kids [at Andover, everyone will be new], and you can rebuild a reputation.  But, he added, it is important to reflect upon what went well, because you have opportunities to take what you did well in middle school and reconstruct what’s already been done well again in high school.  That resonated with me from this past Thursday.  I’ve been thinking about things I’ve done well throughout my three years in middle school.  

• Staying on top of my priorities
• Staying organized
• Finding time to exercise
• Talking with my teachers when I need help; this also helps build stronger and more personal relationships with teachers
• Listening to friends when they need it

These are certainly characteristics that I hope I will be able to take to Andover this fall.  Sometimes it’s nice to have a second chance and start over, yet other times, it’s just as okay to build off something I’ve already done well.  Afterall, building off what I’ve already established will allow to go further, rather than start all over from scratch.  I’ll continue to think what I’ve done well in middle school.  

What we take for granted

What we take for granted, we often don’t learn to appreciate until they’re gone.  That was a major theme in my day-to-day life this past week. First, I had some foot pain which hindered the smoothness and flexibility of my saunter.  Second, my math teacher was left class early for an appointment, so we were just given a study hall session.  Third, varsity tennis practice ended this Wednesday and yesterday was the first weekday I didn’t have sports which made me feel oddly…empty.

I injured my foot playing tennis last week.  Over the weekend, I noticed some pain but didn’t pay much attention to it until this weekend when I tried to go for a 4 mile run.  Every step I took resulted in great throbbing until I decided to stop running.  I had to turn around and walk back after running 1.5 miles out.  I missed the exhilaration of running.  Although running can be quite tiring, and frankly, will hurt my legs if the distance is too extreme, there is a part of me that feels free when I can move at such speed.  Walking the 1.5 miles home felt dull, and neither my energy levels nor my stress levels seemed to have changed.  Being injured, I was unable to run for a few days and for me, that didn’t help my increasing stress levels that come with Finals exam prep.  I run to recuperate from a stressful day.  Unable to do that, I realized how much I’d taken being able to run for granted and the great relaxation that comes with the aftermath.

Varsity tennis session officially ended this past Thursday.  We won our last game which was a wonderful way to end the season.  Yesterday, for the first Thursday since March, I haven’t had to sit at school for 3 hours, waiting for practice to begin.  I was picked up and for the first time in a few months, I got home earlier than 5.  A month ago, I would’ve been very happy to go home; staying at school for 3 hours before practice began was very tiresome and I got very little homework done.  I suppose I took the team’s time together and practice for granted, because yesterday, I felt oddly more vacant.  I almost felt obliged to socialize with someone like I’ve been doing every evening with the team.  Now that the season is over; all I can appreciate is the time that I had.  

So I suppose be grateful for the present, because what we take for granted, we often don’t learn to appreciate until it’s gone.  By then, it’s sometimes too late.

Thoughts on Boarding School

Recently, I’ve been thinking about boarding school as the end of eighth grade approaches.  It’s kind of scary to think about leaving home in September, leaving my community and leaving my friends.  It’s almost like I have to build everything over again from scratch, including friends, relationships with teachers, a new lifestyle [since I won’t be with my parents and will be managing most things on my own], and reconstructing a reputation.  

I’ll have to manage my life on my own with the help of teachers and friends.  I’m anticipating that this will help me develop more independence and responsibility, as I will be laundering my clothes every weekend and managing my own varying schedules week to week.  Mom will no longer have to take me to my piano lesson every Saturday morning…I will have to remember to go weekly myself.  Dad will no longer drive me to tennis practice weekly.  I’ll have to remember to practice with some peers.  My decisions are becoming closer to me.  It’s on me.  

Being a control freak, all of this sounds pleasant to me, knowing that I am in full control of how I run my lifestyle at Andover.  Yet at the same time, it scares me to know that I will have to start almost everything again from scratch, an average of 4 years earlier than most kids when they leave for college.  I’ll have my past experience to guide me to make better first-time around decisions at Andover but as I reconstruct a boarding school lifestyle, I will also fall into new pitfalls I hadn’t fallen into before with my parents around me all the time.  

High school seems like such a big time ahead of me.  It manifests itself as some of the most critical years to my success, as it leads directly into college.  I’m on for this challenge, this new life I plan on building at an early age.  It’ll give me new opportunities to understand more about how the world works.  It’ll give me more responsibilities to attend to.  It’ll help me make more friends. It’ll prep me for later in college.  That I know I’ll appreciate.    

Why do the years just keep passing faster?

Why do the years just keep passing faster and faster?  It confuses me.  In my eyes, the world just keeps moving faster and faster, ceaselessly spinning…ceaselessly progressing.  Me, possibly chasing it and struggling to keep up.  

It seems as if eighth grade started not long ago and before I’ve even realized it, summer vacation is merely 2 weeks away.  Yet so much has happened.  I’m panicking over finals, which I remember, this month of last year, freaking out about.  And it is encroaching upon me faster than I realized as an eighth grader.  

I just watched the Pirates of the Caribbean trailer.  I remember being obsessed with Pirates of the Caribbean in sixth grade.  That was in 2014.  After watching all four of the previous films, I desperately researched when the fifth sequel would be released.  I remember being 11 years old, seeing release date 2017 back in 2014 and thinking that year will never come! It’s such a long time from now!  I remember complaining to my dad why the film couldn’t come out next year.  He told me films take years to make.  No longer do I feel that 2017 is far away.  It came faster than I’d anticipated.  So fast that Pirates of the Caribbean came out.

I still remember sixth grade as if it were yesterday.  In fact, my memories seem to be clearest after sixth grade.  I still remember what happened fifth grade.  I remember mostly what I saw, but not what I felt.  My memories are a bit more detached from fifth grade or younger. I don’t remember feelings, emotions and states of minds as I do starting in sixth grade.  I suppose I can credit my better sense of self which really began developing in sixth grade for my remembrance of feelings.  Now, when I reflect on an event, I don’t view it with as much detachment.  I remember my feelings, the wild thoughts that were running through me, and of course, what I was seeing.  

It’s crazy how quickly life is moving.  Before I know it, high school will be over. Why do the years just keep passing faster?  

Carpe Diem

Here’s what I find fascinating:  When something goes bad, I find myself imagining all possible outcomes.  I imagine things that could happen, consequences for my mistakes or misdoings.  I imagine a chain reaction, a string, of bad things to come when something goes wrong.  But ultimately, here’s the thing, I don’t think any consequence I’ve imagined has ever happened.  Something else intervenes, finding a way to either relieve me or to stress me out more.  

For example, on Friday before my tennis practice, I went on a run by the Charles.  I had only 10 minutes before practice, but coach always required we run.  I ran by the river and soon, I found that the warm weather distracted me from time.  Until I found out I’d run too far to get to practice on time.  Instead of running merely a mile round-trip, I had run a mile one-way.  Looking at my watch, I saw I had only 3 minutes before practice began; it was 5:57 PM.  Naturally I began to freak out.  Along the river, you can see the school, but it seems to take forever to reach it when you actually start running.  I estimated I’d return to school at around 6:05, which was five minutes late for practice.  In my head, I began to panic.  I imagined all of the consequences.  Coach loved to make the team run as a punishment.  I thought he’d make the whole team run 5 laps around four courts together when I arrived.   I imagined the whole team staring at me as I walking onto the courts.  I thought about trying to put on a straight face, yet still feeling super embarrassed.  I thought about how my parents would be mad at me.  I thought about how Coach might make me pick up all the tennis balls after practice…

Then, I arrived at the Athletics Center.  I ran into the building, grabbed my tennis bag, and sprinted downstairs into the courts.  I checked my watch: 6:04.  But as I was entering the courts, three Varsity Tennis boys walked out of the courts.  Why were they just walking out?  When I fully entered the tennis courts, I found 2 more senior varsity tennis boys sitting on the chairs talking with each other.  On the farthest court, two boys were finishing a one set match against each other.  And my coach was nowhere to be seen.  Nor were any of the girls varsity players on the team.  Now that was really unexpected.  

While I was running, I had never even considered the possibility that no one was on the courts, nevermind considering that practice had been cancelled that night.  All that worrying I was doing while running was to met by relief.  No, the team wouldn’t have to run 5 laps around four courts.  No, I wouldn’t have to pick up all the balls after practice.  No, my coach wasn’t even there to chastise me.  

I suppose sometimes the consequences I imagine are too extreme to be realistic, which is why they [hopefully] never follow through.  I find the consequences I imagine exacerbate as my panic levels increase.  My observation this week is that life does not unfold the way one can anticipate it.  In fact, very few can anticipate life.  It almost just…happens.  So being present in the moment, practicing carpe diem, is how I’ll cope with the deluge of potential consequences from my imagination.

Holding My Breath

Breath holding.  That’s what this week felt like.  Last Friday, I walked out of school with a cascade of items on my agenda:  4 assessments, 1 concert at school, two late varsity tennis practices, a concert dress rehearsal at the beginning of the week, and the re-performance of OMG for the whole school [which ended up being cancelled due to an absentee].  Today, I walked out of the main door of school relieved…as if a giant breath as been released that had been trapped in my lungs 3 weeks before the last day of school.  I felt my shoulders less tense knowing I had made it through this difficult week that seemed to last too long, knowing that I had would be given the gift a moderately relaxing weekend as a reward.  

From beach in Port Douglas, Australia. 

Sometimes I hold my breath unconsciously, like when I’m taking a test.  I’m holding my breath, wondering whether I’ll know the answer to the following question.  Or when I’m backstage, wondering whether I can be my character on stage in front of the crowd.  Or when I’m approaching a shaky part on the piano with my chamber group, wondering whether I’ll mess up the fingering that I correctly play 60% of the time.  Life is full of surprises and I suppose the breath holding comes and goes with your attachments towards what you’re doing.  When it leaves, it’s almost like a light rain shower has just sprinkled through your life, cooling down the fire that’s causing stressful emotions.  But one thing I notice consistently when I hold my breath:  there’s always a sense of unsureness whether that be unsureness of a reaction or unsureness of an outcome.  I suppose I just have to be prepared.  So here I go, holding my breath then noticing it leave.  

Success is no accident

Today at the annual Walk for Hunger in Boston, I was talking with one of my sixth grade teachers about smartphones.  He was telling about how smartphones are occupying teenager's time and how no matter what boundaries he sets for usage on a phone, his teenager always finds a way around to communicating with his friends.  Addiction to a phone.  That was something I was very well aware of when I got a phone this past week and Instagram.  I'm beginning to feel the pull of the media…the endless desire to connect with friends and find out what other people are thinking and feeling.  It is harder than I expected to avoid checking that phone or replying to that text.  I deliberately muted ringers and notifications so that I would not be tempted to look.

Yet my teacher and I were talking today about how smartphones can slowly occupy so much time from a student's life that it's affecting their grades.  And when parents try to set goals as motivation, kids sometimes lack that motivation to attain them, even if it means losing their phone.  It's that temporary relief that we feel when we immerse ourselves in social media that we end up forgetting about reality.  It's temporary.  In fact, my teacher was telling me how media addiction is to some degree taking away kids impetus to be successful.  Grades dip because of a lack of hard work and absorption in the media.  Media can come with wonderful benefits.  These should not withdraw from ones desire to be better.  While engaging with media, we need to remember the importance of thinking long term.  Which is why I decided to inspire myself after completing the 20 mile Walk for Hunger.  [Post about Walk for Hunger next week!]

"Success is no accident.  It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrificing and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do." ~Pele

What's Once in a Life

This past weekend, was the annual Massachusett Educational Theatre Guild [METG] Drama Festival, which is a judged contest where around 6-7 schools are evaluated on their performance of a play of their choosing.  Our school participates annually.  This year, our play OMG [Opposite Machine Gadget] won silver.  

Despite the plot of the play and the roles played by various individuals, I’m here to honor the process.  I’d like to consider myself one who honors the process that takes me from point A to point B, and to be honest, preparing for Dramafest was very time consuming.  

Initially, when I joined the class, I was notified that there would be a weekend rehearsal.  I wasn’t expecting it to be three hours long.  Initially, when I joined the class, I was notified that Dramafest would take place on a Saturday in April.  I wasn’t expecting it to be 14 hours longs!  I was met by surprises and at many points, I felt resentment in joining the class.  I didn’t want to dedicate a whole Saturday [14 hours!] to Drama!  I needed to do homework!  I needed to practice tennis!  I have piano lessons every Saturday!  I expected it to be vapid and boring.  

This past weekend, when I went to Dramafest, that belief changed.  Coming out of Festival, I was extremely satisfied, not only by my school’s performance, but by my opportunity to indulge in the experience of attending fest.  It may not sound too significant, but in itself, Dramafest is an experience.  

Photo from www.bbns.org of closing scene.  Me, holding the "OMG"

Drama is very physical, and physicality on the stage is vital to a performance’s success…yet equally important is mentality.  My school performed last among the six schools so in my mind, all I could think about was how good all the other schools’ performances were before we performed.  Most of the plays that were performed gave me this reaction…“That was amazing!”  

Besides watching five other performances, we were also given time to hang out with other students from other schools.  In a way, it was a social opportunity.  In retrospect, 14 hours didn’t seem so bad afterall.    

Why do I call this post “What’s Once in a Life”?  Here’s my answer: to be frank, I don’t think I would participate in Dramafest again, yet I think it was important that I experienced it.  There are things in life that I would love to do frequently [dedicate a Saturday to Student Conferences, compete in certain sports etc. ] and on the other end, things I would indulge in once in a lifetime.   Regardless, one of my goals is to learn as much about the world as possible.  This is another way I have extended my knowledge.  

Departing Question:  What’s something you would do/have done that you wouldn’t consider doing again, but was something that was important to do at least one in your life?