Final Weekend

I can barely describe how I feel. It's a bittersweet moment for me. I'm leaving the school I've attended for four years, the place I've gotten to know so well, in one week. One week. Then I become an alumnus of this institution. I cannot believe it. I still remember so vividly the day I moved into Isham, how surprised I was that there was an elevator in the dorm, touched by the seniors who helped me move my belonging into my room, sweating from the torturously hot day. I still remember that day so clearly. I remember my body shaking unrelentingly the morning we were driving up to campus. I told myself that I wouldn't be nervous, that I would have myself under control. But at the sight of the bell tower during my first move-in day, even my arms began to shake. Did I belong here? Was I accepted by accident? 

I cannot believe I'm one week away from leaving this institution. I simply cannot believe how quickly these past four years have flown by. Truly in the blink of an eye. Now on my way out of Andover, I have a couple of things sitting in front of me. I have a pile of finals work to complete. No, this is not the time to give up. In fact, this is the last final opportunity for me to actually show my ability to work. I accomplished some more bucket list items this week, including going to the Addison Gallery of American Art and going downtown to La Fina for dinner with my family tonight. Perhaps one last thing that I need to do is find the "secret garden" on the Abbot campus. 

I am flooded with feelings of gratitude for my parents, peers, instructors, and coaches who have guided me these four years. I am also growing oddly introspective lately about how I've changed as a person after coming to Andover. I'm reflecting on the dos and don'ts that I've learned here that will hopefully make my college experience even better. This morning on the elliptical, I began trying to put together some funny moments during these last four years. This place has paradoxically sucked out a lot of energy from me, but it's also given me so much life. It's one of those ineffable balances that leaves me shaken to consider. And here I am, on my last stretch at Andover, still stressed about an English essay, a history research paper, and a math test. A norm that I've honestly grown to love. Busyness is golden. 

Some emojis describing how I'm feeling right now because when life becomes inexplicable, we should turn to art:

And yes, the order matters :)

Thank you, Andover. For the ups, the downs, and everything in between. 

 

My final tennis match of high school

It's been four years since I stepped onto Andover's campus as a student. Yet through the years, tennis season has indubitably been the backdrop of many of my fondest memories. Being on the team has made me a better team player, a more accountable person, and taught me how to support my peers better. While tennis is an "individual" sport, our wins don't come unless everyone feels supported. Being a part of this greater collective has been the most enjoyable part of each season. 

Today, in a sweltering hot 88 degrees, I played my last match of the season…my last match of senior year…and my last tennis match of my high school career. And unsurprisingly, this match was against our rival: Exeter. I write tonight to remember this amazing match, which was one characterized by grit, perseverance, and "momentum" as our coach likes to call it. 

During our warmup, I remember my body feeling sticky already. As I was standing at the net for some volleys, I was surprised by how merely standing there incited sweat to seep through my skin. We kicked off the match with singles. I played line 4, and after running through the lineup, we began warming up with our opponents. I played the same girl in singles whom I had lost 3-6, 3-6 to last week. It was also a hot day last Saturday, but nothing compared to the heat on the courts today. So during the warmups, I was wary, knowing that I'd been beaten last week. We each held serve until it was 2-3 her. Then, I broke away 4-3 at the changeover. Feeling happy about breaking her serve, I found momentum within myself to hit through my shots. But then, she caught up. The score was 6-5 me, and I lost the game. 6-6. I don't even remember what was going through my head at that moment, though I do remember losing the game by a hefty margin. I don't know how I got my momentum back, but I somehow won 7-2 in the tiebreak. 

In our second set, I lost 3-6. I felt out of it. Coach walked up to me and told me that she could literally tell I was losing from the bleachers and that what I needed was an attitude change. Walking into the 10-point super tiebreak that would determine the match, I told myself, this is a clean slate. I have a chance now. I just need to break through and win the first couple of points to get a lead. And I found that lead. It was 5-2 during the first changeover (yes, we should have changed the point before). Then 7-5 during the next change over. Finally, at 9-6, I told myself, this is it. This is the point that I would win. I don't actually remember the shot that I hit but I remember my opponent's ball went out. It was one of those matches that took 3 hours and 24 minutes (yes I timed it) and left both of us tired and just wanting to get over with it. But I'm both proud and surprised by how I pushed through. While I didn't hit with the pace that I would have liked, I think that's what helped me win this week since last week. So 6-6 (7-2); 3-6; 10-6. When our match was over, all the other singles matches had been over for a while and doubles had begun. Coach told me that my match tied us up with Exeter. After singles, Andover-Exeter was 3-3.

Since my singles match took much longer than the others, my doubles match with PB started and ended last. We played #2 doubles and halfway through our match, the other two doubles teams finished. Our #1 dubs had lost and our #3 dubs had won, meaning the Andover-Exeter score was still tied 4-4. With everyone watching our match, PB and I knew that we were the determining game for this match. We started strong, up 3-0. But then, our opponents slowly began to creep up behind us, always just a game behind. The last score I remember was being up 7-5. We were up in the set 40-15 and Exeter was on serve and I was on the backhand side. The final point consisted of a couple of high groundstrokes and the winning shot was a short volley by me at the net. I think I will remember that ball forever. I've never hit the winning stroke by a forced error in a doubles match. It came just above my comfortable strike zone, floating towards the middle of the court. I bumped it over with a short volley that was so short I wasn't even sure it had gone over the net after I hit it. At this point, I thought I'd framed the shot and I kept thinking whether it was the right move to poach. But then moments later, I saw both Exeter girls rushing towards the net which was when I realized it had actually gone over. But it was too late. By the time it registered in my brain that they were running, the ball had already bounced twice. I let out a huge scream and the next thing I remember is the team, who had been watching on the sidelines, rush towards our court. 

Coach repeatedly tells us: "tennis is all about creating your own momentum." This is perhaps the greatest lesson I've learned this season. Our match against Exeter today, in particular, showed me how momentum can indeed be generated from nothing but ourselves and how powerful it is in spite of encounters with skilled players. In fact, momentum comes from elevating every shot. Framed it? AMAZING SHOT! It's having that kind of mentality that enabled me to win both of my matches today. Two weeks ago, Pingree beat us 2-7. Last week, Exeter swept our team, as in, every single person on our team lost. Today, we won 5-4, our first win and last game. This makes me so happy and despite the stress of this match, for both Coach and each player, I am convinced that this was the best A/E I've had during high school. But I also learned an important lesson that I will carry with me because Coach's theory on momentum applies beyond the court too. Life is all about building momentum and confidence within ourselves in order to put forth our best selves in everything we do. Sometimes we just have to say those points that we win from a shank or frame are nevertheless good shots.

A Weekend of Firsts

Another long weekend just passed. With this new schedule, "long" weekends this year have been 4 days, meaning we get both Monday and Tuesday off from classes. This has been one of the greatest rewards of the schedule this year, which has really enabled me to relax during weekends. Perhaps a nice treat during senior year. 

The timing of this long weekend couldn't have been better because the countdown towards graduation is getting more real every day. There are something like 26 more days until I officially become an alumnus of Andover. Only 26 days until I become a high school graduate and begin a new chapter of my life. Turning the page. So this long weekend, I put off my work more than I would usually feel comfortable doing to get in some firsts and check off bucket-list items.

I went to Pomps Pond for the first time this weekend! Since Pomps is around 2 miles each way from campus, I ran there on my Sunday morning run. It's a shame that I never thought of going to Pomps earlier during my time at Andover. It's a peaceful, though small beach with a lake that's surrounded by lots of trees. It's located next to a graveyard, which means traffic noises are minimal. On Sunday, it was sunny, bright, and warm, so I just stood on the beach in my running shoes and admired this view for 15 minutes. The air was fresh, crisp and there wasn't a single person around. 

Pomps Pond, Andover MA

I also went up to the Bell Tower on campus for the first time. Though the Bell Tower is arguably one of the most iconic structures on campus, it's mysterious because few people have ever been up. Every hour, the bells ring, and every evening at 5 PM our chaplain goes to the Bell Tower to play music, signaling the commencement of dinner. The bells are super loud, so they can be heard even from the most remote corners of campus. On another note, the Bell Tower was the first thing I saw when I visited Andover's campus back in eighth grade driving up Main Street. This is still the street and direction I come from when I drive to Andover so I'll always remember it as the marker visible long in the distance of campus's proximity. 

Bell Tower at night

I also took my first AP exam yesterday, though I don't have pictures of that (how sad :P). I sat for Macroeconomics, and even though I didn't take the class at school, I thought it was a good experience to self-study a subject and test myself on it. I'm not preoccupied with the grade, rather, I see it as a good learning experience. Paired with recent news headlines, particularly regarding interest rates, inflation, and unemployment, self-studying macro actually helped me understand the world around me better. 

Finally, I took my first cooking class here at Andover tonight! Our chef instructor works at a non-profit called Newall that aims to give everybody access to clean food that's "grown with love for the earth and that nourishes the body." Through sustainable and new farming techniques, she believes strongly in this mission. That's why she taught us how to make overnight salads from SCRATCH with farm-fresh ingredients. This is my first time ever making even the dressing of the salad, but it was super enlightening to learn how the ingredients work together. We used oregano, green onion, olive oil, honey, sun nut butter, ice water, salt, and lemon for the dressing. Then, we mixed in chopped lettuce, radishes, carrots, white radishes, and raisins. I learned that I've been holding the kitchen knife in my hand wrong this entire time LOL.

Twisted carrots

Salad dressings!

My two salads :))

I had an amazing long weekend, the kind that I envisioned characterizing my senior spring years back. Although we're still in the middle of a pandemic, it honestly didn't feel like it. This was truly one incredible (not to mention busy) weekend and I'm so grateful for each of these events, all of the meals I enjoyed with people, and the time I spent outdoors. Definitely one for the books. 

Believing in oneself

One of the hardest things with which I've struggled from a young age is believing in myself. I've consistently found it hard to believe in my own abilities and this manifests in my life through small venues. From an anxious test-taking mentality (even if I've spent ample time preparing) to feeling imposter syndrome in classroom settings, there's this little voice in my head that's always telling me what could go wrong rather than how I should approach what lies before me. 

Perhaps my struggle to believe in myself manifests most clearly in sports, as contradicting as this may sound. It's springtime, my favorite season, which also means tennis season. Ever since I began playing tennis, I've found myself hitting well during practice. I swing through my shots fully, am not afraid to hit 100% when I'm putting away the point, and move my feet better across the court. Yet when I start playing matches or keeping track of points, something tenses up in me. My bones seem to turn into iron, preventing any sort of fluid movement. The way I practice seems to have never existed and my ability to swing through shots diminishes to maybe just 60% of what I usually can hit. During matches, what runs through my head should be "how am I going to hit that ball?" Instead, what I often find running through my head is "don't hit it out." That's what I've called my "bad mental game" all these years. Yet recently it became clear to me that it's not just as simple as one's "mental game." I believe it speaks to a greater mental barrier, or rather, this struggle to believe in myself. I am convinced that if I believed in my own ability to put the ball where I wanted to, I wouldn't play this way in matches.  

I'm working on getting over this barrier through tennis and hoping that playing this sport will encourage more self-encouragement in other areas of my life socially and academically. I need to get over selling myself short, so this week, I wanted to write about one shot I hit in a game that felt incredible. My partner and I were playing doubles and we were approaching the next for a short ball. It landed in the court, bouncing just behind the service line on my forehand side. The first thing that went through my head was "I'm going to keep my racket face closed." Then, as I began to swing, I said to myself "I'm going to end the point here." In doubles, middle balls are actually a difficult shot to receive since it requires more communication and if the other pair isn't positioned properly on the court, it could easily turn into a winner. And that's exactly what happened. The ball land down the middle, just beyond the service line, and just out of reach of both partners. A middle winner. An automatic point for us. At first, I was shocked that I had been able to hit at 100%, and the second after, I couldn't believe the ball had actually gone in. It was a surprising, surreal moment for me in a time when I've been struggling more than ever to see the light at the end of the tunnel. That point though is one to remember. 

Perhaps all we must do is turn to Descartes: I think, therefore I am.