From Yo Sistag Yaaaymiee
How’s school?
I’ve never been so busy in my life
….
but I’m getting used to it
From Casey
Mother doesn’t believe you’re stressed
Or more like she’s surprised
I’m surprised too lol
“Bro, I used to hate when adults were like ‘Welcome to the real world’ or ‘In the real world, it’s not going to be like this.’ It was always so condescending, you know?” I say to my sister as I smear concealer over my forehead and cheeks. They’re dotted with “blooming flowers” as my grandma would say; they’re really just stress and mask pimples.
The bio students got their first test scores back this week. Life suddenly seems more serious, like everything actually matters. People have to pick and choose what they can afford to invest their time and energy in, and getting behind can’t be remedied by crossing fingers.
We’re getting ready to get coffee and it’s Friday, but it’s the first time I’m letting myself take the time to get off campus this week. “And like, it makes everything seem like a big deal. But I think I get it now. I really wish I didn’t.”
Sparsely covered hills behind La Sierra’s campus stand against the smoky orange and blue sky. I find myself trekking a dirt path past the water tower on a warm Thursday night after a long chem lab and after a long week with no destination in mind. After two months of avoiding the gym, the sweat lining my body and my harsh breathing embarrass me, even in privacy, but I stop minding it once I turn around. At the peak of one of those hills, I marvel at the city lights, lights like stars contained in a bowl of dusty hills, and it’s so much more than the classrooms and the dorm and the cafeteria that often seem like the world in its entirety.
Pho Ha and 5-Stars Pho are a short drive away from campus to escape to when I feel burnt out or empty, where I can stuff myself with a steaming bowl of sweet, spicy, and sour soup and noodles with new friends who make me laugh until I feel like throwing up, so full of good food and joy. And Denny’s to run to at midnight to share high school memories and hot thoughts over a plate of choconana pancakes with someone who makes college more than just school.
Even on campus, there are pieces of home in the masked smiles and waves from people who value me, even after meeting me just once. In Humanities 113, I find inspiration. Reading the fragile lines of a peer’s poem makes my eyes warm with tears, and learning how to immerse readers pushes up my cheeks under my mask in excitement to write. On Wednesdays, Angwin Hall feels like a home. The sweetest girls concoct cozy drinks for us or set up painting nights with music to sing and sway to. The Honors Society makes holidays on campus festive with warm community and bustling dinners and Super Smash Bros. tournaments.
Sometimes I wish I could be back at home compartmentalizing my life; at home, I could join class wearing soft pajamas with a cup of hot coffee to warm my hands, close my laptop at the end of Zoom meetings, paint between classes, and eat dinner with my family. In-person, school threatens to bleed into life as a whole, but I also find new life in being present here. The hills, the city, the cities beyond this city, the restaurants, and the people offer me a world, beyond home and school.
I cry a lot now, because my friends are sad, because I’m scared of failure and having to work for success somehow feels like failure, because my social battery drains so quickly, because bad habits I thought I grew out of over quarantine are back, because I miss home and how romantically I used to view the world, because there are thoughts crowding my head, and because sometimes there are tears spilling from my eyes and I don’t know why.
But there are also thoughts spilling from my mouth and hands, cultivated from all the invaluable knowledge I’ve received. My fingers race as I write about the cell cycle or my developing worldview on race and racism and the subtle ways it manifests. Bouts of energy rush into my churning mind and widened eyes and lifted voice when I write new descriptions of the life around me in poetry, or when I present my lab group’s research project on nematodes and pH.
I am overflowing, so full knowing how blessed I am to have had the things I miss, and so full from all that I have found. I have found places and ways to grow within myself. I have found pride in the work I produce in knowing it is a result of my efforts, and not luck as I felt in high school. It makes me eager to progress. I have found the beauty of struggle, and I wish I had known struggling was okay before I started college.
I have found greater value in everything I do because I have had to learn how to prioritize. I have found lovely people that make life new and beautiful who I want to continue making memories with at La Sierra. It makes me excited to be able to look back and see all the growth and memories I have made, and it’s all I could ever ask for.
–– Katie Jang (English Literature/Pre-Medicine, Class of 2025)