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The Beginning of the
End
Jacqueline Fisher
Washington, D.C. - Political Science
The month of January takes its name from the two-faced Greek god Janus,
forever looking forward to the future while seeing the past; the perfect
context for the first week of my last semester at Howard. I must look
forward, whether I want to or not, and I cannot help but look back; the
present must balance between the two. I must not become overwhelmed in
what I did not do and I cannot fantasize (on a good day) or worry (on
the much more common not-so-good days) about what I will do. But this
week, the emphasis has been much more on yesterday.
I have felt much of the same
anticipation as my very first days here three years ago. “What will
these next few years bring?” was the question in August 1998. It is the
same question whispered by the wind in these blustery days of January,
only now it is much less carefree, it is the demand that fills every
silent moment of contemplation. Three years ago, the course of the
following four years was set. But for the first time in my life, I am
about to embark on unchartered territory. There is no set plan, except
for the one I make for myself. There are no great expectations to be
filled. The decision is totally mine and sometimes I wish it were
someone else’s.
Only recently have I recognized
it is a privilege to take mostly freshman courses in the last half of
your senior year. Before that epiphany, nearsightedness fueled my
self-condemnation: “Only a loser retakes freshman courses in their last
semester of senior year,” “If only I had done what I was supposed to the
first time around, I could have graduated a semester or a year ago” and
“I hope none of my associates from the first time I took this course
find out that I’m taking it again.” I cringed when the class erupted
into a fit of giggles each time my Introduction to Psychology professor
said the word “sex”. I rolled my eyes at students jostling to get a seat
on the front row of a crowded class, eager to make good impressions on
the professor. They seemed to race each other to each lecture,
overflowing with excitement and energy. I could not find anything to be
so very excited about and had trouble remembering ever being so
enthusiastic about anything. And herein lies the blessing. I have been
given the chance not only to correct some of my past mistakes, but also
the chance to really look at myself in a progression, to see what I was
like before I allowed myself to become so cynical and so jaded, before I
stopped caring.
Somewhere over these three and
half years, school did not matter so much. Under normal circumstances,
this would be considered a normal part of the college experience, as
fundamental as taking English or math. However, the problem came when I
did not substitute another future goal, something that mattered even
more. I “got hip to the game” and realized a college degree was simply a
piece of paper that meant that you could follow directions but was by no
means an indication of your intelligence or your potential. While this
is an unfortunate truth about the American higher education system, it
does not totally undermine the value of a degree, as can be discovered
by a short conversation with anyone who only graduated from high school.
I became frustrated when I had been here a year and had yet to learn
anything new. It was far too easy to do nothing most of the time and
still come out on top. I lost all sense of worth in this process and
lost sight of why I was here in the first place. Bottom line, I just got
lazy. And eventually it caught up with me.
So what am I doing now? Or
better yet, what am I going to do tomorrow? What is the lesson to carry
with me to the next level? As for the future, the most important lesson
I have learned about myself is that I must always keep in mind the task
at hand and its summary execution, while still looking at the next step.
Goal setting is truly a dynamic process and I must stay ahead of myself,
otherwise complacency will lead to stagnation and a host of other
negative emotions and states of existence. In the meantime, in the here
and now, I will keep an open mind and see what else these freshmen have
to offer, since they showed me in less than a week what these past three
and half years really are about.
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