You have to experience sadness to know happiness

"Some days are just bad days, that's all. You have to experience sadness to know happiness, and I remind myself that not every day is going to be a good day, that's just the way it is!" -Dita von Teese

Just like you have to experience cold weather to know hot weather, you have to experience knowing before you feel confused, you're feelings are hurt before you learn to stop hurting others' feelings, you have to work hard before you can feel relaxation, you have to give up once before you learn when to keep going, you have to lose before you can win, you have to sink before you can float.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Perhaps Newton's Third Law applies beyond physics.

Every minute must be intentional

It’s sadden me that I’m giving up piano. I’ve been playing piano for over ten years now, and while I was never a rigorous player, I always practiced consistently. As a freshman, I found time to practice every night and over the summer, I practiced daily as well. Even though I’m just one year older, it’s so difficult to find time to practice. I practice maybe once per week, and during the weekends, I’m always cooped up in my dorm working on something. During my piano lesson last week, I told my teacher I would be dropping piano winter term. 

While I’m sitting here writing that I don’t have time to practice, the truth is, I think I could have time. My having to quit piano is really my own workings of not making time for it. When I look at all the people at school who seem to be part of every dance group, every math club, every community engagement, and every debate team, I always wonder how they do it. Maybe they cut back on sleep. Maybe they don’t finish all their homework. Maybe they do finish their homework for the week during the weekends, and then focus on those clubs during the week. The thing is, at Andover and in the rest of life, I realize that nothing is going to happen unless I make time for it. 

Perhaps I’ve learned this the hard way, by allowing myself to fall too deep into the habit of not practicing piano, and not making time for it. When I say “make time for it”, I mean write out a schedule and leave a slot blank. I didn’t realize how intentional making time had to be. Each weekend I’ve told myself, alright Ava, you’re gonna relax this weekend and watch a movie. It never happened. The TV’s would be off the entire weekend and my Amazon PrimeVideo app would not be opened either. This weekend, I tried something different. I told myself not to work from 7-8 PM. During that time I actually did not work and I found time to enjoy a portion of a movie. I suppose that’s how all those people on campus who seem to be a part of every club manage their time. I’ve learned nothing is just going to happen if I tell myself to do it. Every minute must be intentional, and making time for things in my life is really a testament of how well I can purposefully delegate time. 

Experiencing synergy through trust

I used to write frequently about about synergy after reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Stephen Covey. This was back in seventh grade, when I thought I grasped the power of working together with other people. My work with my club, Andover Business Club, this week has changed my understanding of the breadth and scope of this concept which I used to throw around so carelessly.  

I’m the President of Business Club on campus, and something we’ve been trying to start this year, is an on-campus delivery service of simple school supplies, toiletries, and snacks for boarders in hopes of saving people time and money. We call this service BluBoxes. I have been working closely with our club advisor and the deans on campus throughout this past month of school, but as we got the club rolling I realized I was doing everything by myself. I found myself communicating with the deans, the CFO, our club advisor, running club rally, in addition to organizing and planning out our weekly club meetings. It felt I was doing everything, and at club meetings, none of my other board members seemed to know how to help me. I remember telling them that the act of us sharing our ideas was good synergy. That was exactly the opposite of synergy, a concept I so strongly believed I understood as a middle schooler.  

I talked to one of the other board members of the club about feeling like I was doing everything for the club, from operations to planning to communications to execution. He responded very honestly, “Ava, that’s because you are.” That response took me by surprise. “You need to delegate jobs. It’ll be much faster and you won’t feel like you’re doing everything.” I hadn’t realized how accurate his statement was, until I reflected on why I felt the need to do everything. 

I think a major factor that drove me to try to do everything was the fact that I only trusted my own work. For me that hit me hard when the speed of the approval  process began to quicken, and when I realized how much closer we are to our first orders than I had previously believed. That was last week. It was when I realized I could no longer handle everything, and I decided to try “delegating”. 

Delegating seemed weird to me. I was no longer doing everything, I was overseeing everything that was done. That was a little bit scary at first, since I could no longer guarantee whether it would actually be done or not. I sent two people to prepare next weeks club meeting, one person to make a slideshow for it, two people to get an account with the school started for BluBoxes, two people to create an excel sheet with price comparisons for the various products we planned on selling, and for a few people to collectively manage the social media account.  I assigned this work on Tuesday evening, and when I checked in on the group chat, everything had already been completely. I walked into Saturday with money in a bank account, with a rolling Instagram account, a plan for the club meeting next week, and a slideshow to go with it, none of which I had explicitly done myself.  I still can’t quite fathom why in the past I only trusted myself to do tasks. I realize how selfish it was of me, and how inefficient it was for the club. I realize that this past week, we collectively made more progress than I’ve made in the past month by myself. This team work was very incredible.

More importantly, I’ve learned that the people who applied for board positions last year are on the board because they want to be there, and because they want to do this work for BluBoxes and Business Club. I’ve learned to trust them, and finally after four years of thinking I knew what it truly entailed, I’ve demonstrated synergy and experienced the power of this word that I used to throw around unknowingly. 

Life is a rollercoaster

Life is a rollercoaster. 

This week has made me realize how life is constantly a cycle of highs and lows but this week also made me realize how I’m not the only one on this rollercoaster. I started the week off feeling strong on Sunday evening. Sitting on the sofa in the common room, I stared at my english essay, thought about my physics test and I felt like I could conquer all my midterm assessments, four of which were on Friday. I felt a particular strength in my head, and an I can totally do this attitude pervaded through my body. 

This feeling of strength and happiness sustained all through Monday, but on Tuesday, the stress of physics hit me when I spent two hours on six homework problems. I went to Silent Study and sat there staring at my english essay, my french in-class essay, a math test, and my physics test. I remember trying to think about what each teacher expected of me, and I tried to stay positive. However it was difficult to stay positive when it felt like time slipped through of my fingers like grains of sand. 

By Wednesday night I was terribly stressed about physics as I had been unable to solve any problems without help. I had a math test the following the day which I felt underprepared for and in the midst of the stress and the frustration, I felt nothing but overwhelmed. It was the kind of night where I believed every second of the night counted and that what I did with every minute would make an impact on my performance and wellbeing the following day.

Friday night was my high of the week, as it habitually is. I took a walk downtown during the sunset after cross country, and all I could think to myself was, “wow, I made it”. I felt stronger than ever, and frankly, for a moment, I even thought I could conquer anything else that came at me after this week.  I went out to dinner with two of my friends, and we refrained from talking about exams. I think each of us wanted to clear our headspace from the long and stressful week. There was an evident sense of release and happiness amongst ourselves. I could see the glow in my friends’ eyes as we sat around the table, bonding over making it through the week and the scallion pancakes.

Andover is a special place for me: it builds an unique and tenacious character in each of its students. There’s a fire that burns in each of us on this campus that says, “I can do this.” I saw it in each of my friends this week, and it inspired me to feel similarly on Sunday night. But Andover in itself is a rollercoaster and that was a major theme for me this week. On nights that I felt down and overwhelmed, what motivated me to continue and push through was my belief that it would get better in the very near future.  

Life is a rollercoaster.