16

My birthday posts consisted of rants about increased responsibilities with age in the past. I wrote consistently about the difference in responsibilities even though having an extra year on my age didn’t make me feel any different physically. 

This year, I’ve come to a new understanding of age and my birthday (which will probably evolve further when I age). I believe my birthday is a time for reflection, a time where I can look back at my progress and my struggles from a safe distance, knowing that this year is past and that new things are to come.  When I say “safe distance”, I’m suggesting that I can reflect on my life, knowing that it has already moved on in a way. This sort of reflection empowers me to take what went well, and recognize what didn’t go so well, and apply it to this new year of my life. So here I go…

15. A year where I realized what true friendship meant through observing the social dynamic of my schools dining hall. It was a year where I did a lot of traveling, which I am forever grateful for. It was the year I became interested in Korean drama and KPop. It was the year where I realized what genuine gratitude truly meant through the idea of reciprocation. It was the year that I became interested in debate and refined my voice in public speaking. 

At 15, I was still navigating my way through my first year at PA. I refined my study habits, even though they’re still evolving with each coming term. I managed to start a club at 15, and now my club is trying to start a service on campus. At 15, I enjoyed playing tennis the most and I picked up XC again at school. My favorite book from this year was Educated by Tara Westover. I’m also proud of how frequently I met up with my old friends. Being at boarding school put some distance between myself and my friends back home, but I intentionally put effort into keeping in touch. 15 was also the year where I discovered how true happiness manifests. 

While I discovered how unintentional true happiness is, 15 also consisted of a neverending rollercoaster of emotions, particularly in its second half. I felt pretty down at times for prolonged periods of days. Upon retrospection, my math teacher seems to have identified my biggest problem, the problem that’s dragging me down. He notices that I feel as if I hold the weight of the whole world on my shoulders with my worries about college, about finding a job, about doing well in school etc. As a result, sometimes I let one low grade on a test reflect me as a whole when in reality, it’s merely a marker of my performance on one particular test. I have a tendency to blow up the true worth of each grade and I’ve let setbacks get in the way of my happiness.  

I hope to improve upon this area during 16. I hope to able to see the value of a test and learning, without allowing a low grade on one test reflect my entire worth. I will strive to put things more into perspective. As cliche of a phrase as this sounds, I need to realize that screwing up on one assessment in a class won’t utterly determine my life. 15 was a rollercoaster, but it was also a year of realization. I’ve got a new goal for 16 and one year from now, I’m going to take a look at how I’ve done.