Reflections on the Last Year…

It’s sort of weird thinking about where I was just one year ago.

There was an unfamiliar sense of optimism and hope coming into third-year that I couldn’t shake. The first summer of really beginning to dive into my thesis research and work, the friends' adventures, and warm evenings of hours of conversations. My class schedule was set to be the most fulfilling one yet, and I had felt so confident in the friendships I had only dreamed about before heading to school. It was really looking up.

Then, about a year ago, I guess the higher powers had other ideas for me. Knee injury, surgery, recovery, deaths in the family, break-ups, and a whole host of things were thrown at me. I don’t think that any individual plot twist to my life would have been able to really rock my perception of what’s good in the world. But put together? Yeah, I had many questions about whether the world could be fair in a way I would have hoped. I kept telling myself that I would never give myself the chance to ponder how my life was heading the way it was. Was I not being kind to those in my life? Was I not taking my commitments seriously? What put this on my plate?

I don’t think I’ve stopped asking myself this for the last 52 weeks. I want to say I’ve grown. I want to say I’ve been able just to put my last year away, or compartmentalize things to be able to push forward…