Reaching Up and Branching Out

Reaching Up and Branching Out

            As it turns out, when you’re writing a brief memoir about your college experience, it is surprisingly hard to figure out where to start when you’re nearing the end. I’m staring at a blank word document page, trying to decide how to properly squeeze these three and a half years of Baylor college experience out through my fingers and just type. Reassuring myself that this memoir did not have to be the perfect memoir that bested all memoirs before it helps a little. Of course, that is the way it has always been with me and writing – I’m never satisfied with my own work, so it almost always comes as a surprise when people actually enjoy what I write about. It’s been that way with everything I write: essays, fiction, etc. Nothing is safe from that passionate but harsh and doubting shadow lingering in my heart, murmuring critique at me as I type. I don’t believe I truly hate it being there, since it makes me care, and makes me want to do my best, but there have been times when I came really close to hating it, because it used to be much bigger, meaner, and stronger. It used to critique everything I did, and I tried to ignore it, and then I listened to it. Baylor, BIC, and everyone I’ve met in these past three and a half years, however, have forced me to confront it, and have helped me to strengthen my heart against it. I’ve come out of this experience with many questions answered, many trials conquered, and a newfound confidence to face the many questions and trials I still have yet to go toe-to-toe with. With this newfound confidence and a break from my usual, horrible procrastination, I’ll happily write about the journey that Baylor and BIC have given to me.

            In all honesty, my life before coming to Baylor was nothing exciting. For the most part, I was perfectly content, but a little bored. Most of the boredom was my fault, though. I never really bothered with trying to do anything crazy or exciting. I used to be an exceedingly energetic, troublesome, bossy kid who loved to get into and do everything. I couldn’t focus and never listened. Eventually, I was diagnosed with ADHD and was given prescription for it, and that changed a lot of things for me. My grades and attention got a lot better, but my mood and appetite dropped, and pretty much my whole world lost its bright color. It scared the crap out of my parents to see their happy and hyper daughter basically turn robotic, so my prescription and dosage were changed, but I still took it when necessary, which was often. The medication might have had some part in it, but for various reasons, I mellowed out quite a bit as I got older. I eventually got to the point late in middle school where I hardly ever needed it to do really well in school and not drive everyone up the wall.

My newfound love of books and video games, and my suffering self-esteem, probably aided my withdrawal into myself throughout the last of middle school and almost all of high school. I even read the Twilight series all the way through once. That was a low point in my life. I have a best friend, who is also a childhood friend, a grade below me, and we were almost always together, so I didn’t feel the need for a lot of other friends and didn’t really try branching out. I got along well enough with everybody, and hid in the library during lunch with a group of guy friends that were kind of the outsiders of our high school grade. I was just the quiet one in the back of the class that got along with everyone but didn’t really socialize or stand out. Save for a few classes, I never really felt challenged during high school, and I didn’t feel the strong urge to try very hard. I was lazier back then than I am now. There wasn’t particularly anything I felt passionate about, except for writing. I wrote and daydreamed all the time, always wanting to practice and get better. I only ever let my best friend read and critique them since she was exceptionally smart and creative, and I loved and trusted her like a sister. Aside from writing, I didn’t feel exceptionally strong about anything, and I hadn’t experienced very much. Until I came to Baylor and became an official member of the Baylor community bubble, I had always felt like one of those people wandering around on the outside edge of everything.

I finally found a strong interest in psychology during my junior year but had no idea what I wanted to do in it. I wouldn’t have known what to do in any kind of writing major, and I was really only interested in writing fiction anyway, something that I could do for fun in my spare time. I had no particular schools in mind. I was automatically accepted into UT, but, frankly, the idea of moving from the quiet, open country to a busy city like Austin scared the crap out of me. Baylor was the next university after UT, and I really liked its academics, and loved the way it looked and sounded. I hadn’t even thought of Baylor until late into my senior year. I knew I wanted to get into some kind of honors program, so when I searched around I was happy to see I had options. Besides BIC being an honors program, I kind of fell in love with the idea of a challenging but fun alternative to the general courses that let you be in smaller, more integrated courses. I had always enjoyed smaller classes and discussions. I wish I could give a better reason, but I honestly just liked the way it sounded to me and was able to get in, and that is all there was to it. I feel like the more important parts are the reasons why I stayed with the BIC for all three and a half years.

My freshman year of college was exhausting, amazing, and terrifying. I was the only one to go to Baylor in my class, so I was completely alone, more alone than I was used to being. It scared me, but it forced me to reach out, something I had never wanted or needed to do before. When your high school grade is about 90 people that you’ve pretty much grown up with, you already feel like you know everyone and how you relate to them, like some kind of extended family. At Baylor, there were swarms of people I didn’t know at all, and I didn’t even know where anything was. BIC, welcome week, and my small group for Examined Life I really helped with that. Not only did I get with a group of people that I liked and who helped me learn where everything was, I got to know a group of people that I would know for an entire semester through BIC. I also got to meet and know my first best friend at Baylor in the small group. I even ended up in a three-person dorm room where I got to know and befriend one of my roommates. I think she really started to like me when I actually stayed with her during a fire evacuation because she refused to get up and go down from our third-story floor at 2am, and I wasn’t sure what to do but wanted to make sure nothing bad would actually happen to her. I couldn’t blame her. It was the third late-night fire alarm that had gone off that week because some girls couldn’t get it into their heads to watch what they were microwaving. Her mom took a liking to me after that, too, and gave me a big grapefruit-looking fruit as thanks. I still cannot remember what she said it was. I dealt with the lack of privacy, something I had really relished beforehand and found it hard to give up, and the community showers, but enjoyed the people I got to know on my floor. I enjoyed Examined Life I, I loved World Cultures I, especially because I got Dr. Hanks and a fun class, and I somehow managed to make it through Rhetoric I. I didn’t hate that class, but I can honestly say I’m very glad it and Rhetoric II are over.

Compared to everything before it, college was a pretty good slap in the face. Classes were definitely harder, and not all of them felt worth the effort. I had a pre-calculus class at 8am on Tuesdays and Thursdays because apparently I’m a secret masochist deep down inside. I still consider getting a BA instead of a BS one of the best personal moves in my college career. Harder classes got me stressed and scared, but BIC helped me want to face it and fight to do better for once. I didn’t really get the grades I wanted during my freshman year, since quite a bit happened that took some getting used to, but I could feel myself rising up out of whatever dusty, dirty hole I had let myself burrow into over the years before coming to Baylor. The thing about rising up and out into the open, however, is that you then suddenly find yourself exposed and unprotected, and in my case exceptionally self-conscious about many things that I had learned to bury and ignore long ago. It was just easier and safer before. I started to feel self-conscious about many things…how I acted, dressed, looked physically, how well I did in my classes. These were things I never felt motivated to change before, and now it was all coming to me in a wave and making me feel like I could look and act and be someone better even though I had no idea how. I was too big, my hair looked ridiculous, my grades could be better, I was too socially awkward, etc. It was as if all the middle school insecurity and low self-esteem that had been deeply suppressed was now digging its way back out to the surface because I had disturbed and awoken its slumber, and it didn’t feel good at all.

I didn’t know how to handle it, but I tried and for the most part succeeded, and it made for a satisfying freshman year. My ADHD wasn’t something I could ignore anymore once my classes became harder, so I had to start keeping medication with me again, and I starting going to OALA, and they helped with the academic adjustment. I had issues sleeping, something I put up with before coming to Baylor since it didn’t interfere with my life too much, but that wasn’t going to be something I finally tried to do anything about until junior year. I went to career counseling and finalized my determination to be a psychology major but now with an English minor to satiate my lingering desire to read good books, discuss and write about them, and learn more for my personal writing skill. That is also something I’m very grateful to BIC for. I got to read so many different works that I know for a fact I would never have bothered touching otherwise. I didn’t find all of them fantastic, but I was happy to read and learn from them nonetheless. They helped open new worlds and ideas for me. They fueled my imagination and my desire to learn more about the world and the people in it. I’m also a bit of a sucker for Greek and Roman mythology, so reading all those types of books my freshman year was a happy time indeed. I learned that I wasn’t where I wanted to be grade-wise and experience-wise, and by the end of my freshman year was determined to start fixing that immediately. I think a part of me wanted to make up for how I still felt lacking physically and socially by resorting to grades and learning in order to find something to be proud of myself for, but another part of me truly did just want to do better and learn more. Others began dropping out after the first or second semester because BIC wasn’t for them or they simply couldn’t make it work with their majors. I would hear them talking about it amongst themselves, and all the while I would secretly tell myself that I didn’t want to drop BIC at all. BIC, to me, was a much better replacement for the other courses I would’ve had to take, it was full of people I was going to get to know for several years, and it was teaching me about all kinds of things. I loved what it had given me and was ready to take on the heap of courses I knew were coming sophomore year.

Of course, midway through sophomore year was when things took a bit of an unexpected drop emotionally and mentally for a while. I actually made sure to join up with a couple of organizations during my sophomore year, but they were nothing I found myself investing in. They were easy, interesting, and didn’t demand too much of my time. In all honesty, one of my biggest faults is most likely my general laziness for most things, which tends to clash harshly with my tendency to also be highly self-critical of myself. I attack myself for not being good enough in something, and then often feel too lazy or nervous to do anything about it, or feel like I simply can’t do anything about it, and then I berate myself for that, and it makes me feel worse about everything – and endless cycle. I was able to overcome it for the most part academically. I started doing really well in my classes, even in the World Cultures, Natural World classes, and Social World classes. I was able to turn that stress and self-doubt around and make it push me to be productive and ambitious with my grades and with learning. I also mostly was able to get BIC professors that I liked and who helped me to be interested in what I was studying. I wanted to listen, to learn, and to show them that I was truly learning through exams, homework, and essays when I found myself unable to show them through class discussions because I just couldn’t bring myself to open my mouth most of the time. It was as if every time I got ready to say something, an invisible leash would tighten and tug me back by the neck and effectively silence me. Don’t say something stupid and make them think you’re stupid! You’re smart, but that’s about all you have, so don’t ruin it! As overdramatic and self-pitying as that might sound, that’s the basic summation of my thoughts as time went by in my sophomore year. It was fine, though. I loved listening to people, and then thinking about it to myself as I went along. I loved listening to BIC students, especially. BIC was and is full of bright and open-minded people, and many of the ones who were still here by their sophomore year were the ones who were in it to learn and challenge themselves, like me. It was another way I knew I made the right decision when I chose to stay in BIC.

Along with a couple of other coincidences, BIC proved to be of help to me during a time when that something unexpected that I mentioned happened halfway through sophomore year. My first best friend that I had made through BIC and who I had grown very close to for about a year and a half suddenly dropped out. The night I was busy studying for my big Social World I exam was when I got the text that he was dropping out. He knew I had that exam that night, and he hadn’t even hinted at the possibility of him dropping out beforehand. It struck hard, really hard. Part of the way it affected me was my fault, without a doubt. Because of my best and childhood friend, I had grown up completely used to only needing one person to be really close to and to rely on. I had carried that idea with me to Baylor, and when I became friends with someone new, we became attached at the hip and did almost everything together. I didn’t really try to reach out to anybody else, didn’t feel the need to. It was enough to feel wanted and appreciated by this one person that I knew really well. So, when my best friend was suddenly gone, I was left on my own. It was like coming to Baylor all by myself all over again. My two crutches at the time were academics and my best friend, two things I had allowed myself to become dependent upon for my happiness and self-assurance, and one of them had just been knocked out from under me and left me flailing. He had his own important personal reasons for why he couldn’t be at Baylor anymore. I understood that after a while, once I got over the waves of sadness, loneliness, and anger, as justified or unjustified as they were. Now, though, now I felt alone and unsure about what to do. Now, it suddenly felt like I had nobody, and nobody wanted me or appreciated me. Nobody was interested in me for any reason, and I started to blame myself for that. That dark shadow inside me saw its golden opportunity and took it, and lashed out. Now, I was too boring, too quiet, too fat, too average looking, too much of everything pathetic that no amount of good grades could make up for.

You know, I only got in about a couple hours of studying for that exam at most that night. Weirdly enough, though, I still somehow made an A on it despite the mess I made of myself. I still felt like I needed to make an A. I found it rather funny when I told my mom about it later.

For a while, I was spiraling, even if I didn’t show it to other people. I didn’t involve my parents any more than I already had. Both of my parents have been so supportive of me, and I was silly enough to let the idea of me screwing up enough to actually make them disappointed in me scare me into keeping them out of this. As much as I hurt myself over the idea of failing myself, it hurt just as much to imagine that I might fail their belief in me. I tried to figure things out for myself. In the end, I think my best friend leaving like that has helped me, in a way. It was hard at first, and it hurt, because I was the one who kept damaging myself unnecessarily. I felt more alone and exposed than ever, but it forced me to become someone stronger, to hold myself up. I was finally starting to get the idea that there were obviously some personal things I needed to work out and properly deal with. I was beating myself up, blaming myself for everything, and it wasn’t making things better. I was a psychology major. I knew what I was doing to myself, and I knew it wasn’t healthy. However, it’s one thing to read about something in a class, but it’s another thing entirely to have to deal with it yourself. Personally feeling it is something you could never get from a textbook or PowerPoint slide. I did know, however, how I could start changing how I felt. I discovered what I had to do to move on and grow stronger out of this entire ordeal.

Three things helped me with this over the course of the end of my sophomore year and beginning of my junior year: BIC, a new and developing personal outlook on things, and a new best friend, the last one eventually becoming something I would come to appreciate for what it was and regret for what it almost did to me later on. I used to think I didn’t need other people all that much, and then I realized I did need good friends and support, and now I had to figure out how to stay strong and healthy-minded about it. The spring semester of my junior year was cold, sunny, and like turning over a new leaf for me. My wardrobe started to change a bit, I brought the natural dark curl back into my hair after messing it up with straighteners and highlights, and I started to see a world of opportunity around me instead of a happy world beyond my reach. In BIC, as I mentioned before, I enjoyed listening to and getting to know the other students since they seemed to share similar passions. I stuck my neck out, reached out to other people, talked more, joked around with others, found others that were willing to listen to me. I didn’t become particularly close to anyone, but I found myself actually fitting in. I was still pretty quiet and a big introvert, but I allowed myself to take some chances and appreciate how well I could do in my classes and around other people. I allowed myself to learn and grow with my BIC classes. I enjoyed what I was learning in my psychology and English courses, but BIC was something different for me. In BIC, I felt surrounded by people more similar to me than when I was in my psychology courses. In BIC, I was learning about politics, religion, science, the world, the classics, anything and everything, and I soaked it up and let it expand my mind. I felt more aware of the world I had withdrawn from and hadn’t bothered to truly learn about for so long. I discovered that learning for learning’s sake made me happy, because there is no end to the peculiarities and wonders and horrors of our world. Why wouldn’t you want to learn as much as you can while you still have the time and brain function to do so, even if you can’t manage to put all of it to use? There is still so much to the world, the universe, and us, and every single one of us is going to learn and take to heart something different from it all, and it’s so fascinating and frustrating because this is how new discoveries are made, wars are started, etc. I thought about these things, and I still do, because BIC has honestly expanded my mind and opened my eyes. I’ve met dedicated professors, determined and smart fellow students, and long-deceased thinkers and writers in the BIC. I found myself slowly but surely becoming brave enough to face that shadow in my heart, and now I was able to fight it with fresh and stronger knowledge about others, myself, and the world. My mindset about many things, particularly about myself, was changing for the better.

My newly acquired best friend towards the end of my junior year fall semester was one of the two things that almost set me back in my growth. The other thing was the developing doubt about my future that came with my new and expanded outlook on life (along with the knowledge that I was getting closer to graduation). My new best friend was a girl that had happened to move in with me and my other roommates at North Village during the fall semester of my sophomore year. We didn’t speak to each other much at all at first, but then, one night, we somehow ended up together in the living room talking and laughing about all kinds of things for hours, and everything changed after that. Over Christmas break, she had a bad falling out with one of the first friends she had made at Baylor. Spring semester of my sophomore year came around, and I was still moving on from my first friend suddenly leaving and picking myself back up from where I had thrown myself down on the ground. She was now trying to move on from her lost friendship. We were already living together, getting along really well, and had just lost people we were close to. The coincidence of it all still kind of gets to me even today. We found support in each other, and fed each other’s happiness, laughter, and interests. She was sociable, fun, and crazy with a loud laugh, but in a way that I liked and wanted at the time. I didn’t realize yet what I was actually getting myself into. The falling-out with her last friend and the subsequent falling-out with her now ex-boyfriend should have been tip-offs. I won’t go into detail about everything that happened to cause what can only be described as an avalanche of bad times towards the end, because some things are just best left private between two people. The best way to put it might be that she had and still has a lot of personal problems and a lot of growing up to do, and her tendency to cause or be drawn into endless drama doesn’t help anything. The main point is that during the spring semester of my junior year, when things began to turn sour, I was able to realize quick enough that the relationship was poisonous rather than mutually beneficial, both because of her and because of what I was allowing to happen to myself again by allowing her to continue hurting me. This time, though, I was better prepared. Losing the closeness of my first friend, being able to successfully move on from that, facing the harsh fears and self-criticism about myself, and breaking out into a different and better person through the exploration of my major and BIC’s teachings helped me to realize I was letting myself slide off into somewhere I didn’t want to be, and I stopped it all. I broke away, and freed myself, and it wasn’t all that easy this time either, but I did it. I made my decision, finished the semester on as good of a note as I could, signed up for an apartment on my own for this year, and moved on.

Throughout all of this, I prospered in my grades. I finally acknowledged my sleeping problems and started taking medication that would help me not stay up all night and to actually get a good sleep. I started to focus and care more about doing my best academically alongside actually enjoying what I’m being taught. Caring more and exploring my options then brought on the question of what I even wanted to do after graduation. I hadn’t put as much thought into it as I should have. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to specifically pursue after graduation, though I was pretty sure I wanted to go to grad school. I had ideas about some fields that I could look into, but nothing really stood out to me like I was hoping, and that started to really worry me. Why was there nothing I felt really excited to do? Psychology interested me, I didn’t doubt that, but where was the love and passion? I definitely found it in something I already had, though. During my spring semester of my junior year, I took a creative writing course for my English minor. The entire assignment for that class was to write a short story. As stressful as that was, because of how much of a perfectionist I can become over my own work, it was also something I really needed. It forced me to think up and write a random story on a deadline, and I succeeded. I wrote a dark, fictional story that I even still feel like I could’ve done better on, but it did fine for what it was. When it was time to present the first page of our short stories, I was stricken with fear over what others would say. I didn’t want them to be nice about it and get my hopes up if they didn’t mean it, but I desperately wanted them to actually like it, and they did! They actually were intrigued by it! I walked out of class that day happier than I had been in a long time, and it was only over one single page. My world was bright, warm, and sunny inside. I wanted to just fall over and roll around on the grass with a big smile on my face like an idiot. I was even happier when I actually finished my story and people were still saying they liked it. As I said before, I still felt like it could have been better, but it was just reassuring to know that I actually have potential in something that I love so much and was such a big part of my life growing up. If I wasn’t already certain, then the way this class made me feel cemented it for me. I loved to write, even if I never published and it was only ever for fun. Even if I had to work another job and find time to write on the side, then I would be fine. It was a part of me, a piece of my heart, and that was never going away. With that known, and graduation drawing nearer, I now had to deal with the problem of my future’s uncertainty as far as my psychology career goes. I was finally figuring myself out, but now I had to figure out what to do next.

Honestly, this semester couldn’t have been a better end to my college experience if I tried. I don’t regret deciding to graduate early. I’m ready to be done with Baylor. I became certain of this last semester. As time went on, I took a breath to think about things. As much as psychology probably fueled my tendency to be overly introspective about myself and overly speculative about others, it has also opened my eyes to all kinds of things about people and the world around me. In its own way, too, it has helped me to better understand and properly deal with my thoughts and feelings, and it has even helped me to better understand some people and why they think and do what they do. There’s psychology in almost everything, and I honestly like that. Knowing that, I’ve explored my options and interests, and I have discovered that media psychology is actually a legitimate field of study and could very well be something I would be satisfied with. I’ve also come to realize that I’m not ready for grad school yet. There are still some things I need to experience and finish figuring out first (work-wise and personally). I wasn’t sure what this last semester was going to be like, and how I was going to feel and think about it all. Taking a yoga class as my BIC capstone class was a decision that I don’t regret in the least. In general, of course, it helped with my back and digestion, but it did much more than that. It helped calm and de-stress me, stretched out my tense and ill-used muscles, and left me feeling so cheerful and good for the rest of the day. It encouraged me to wear yoga pants, something I would never have dared to do before because of my self-consciousness, and helped me in my progression towards accepting my body and looks for what they were. There is nothing wrong with trying to be healthy, but I’m finally starting to register the idea that I don’t need to be beautiful and thin to be happy and accepted by others. I just needed more self-confidence. I needed to accept myself. I’ve worn yoga pants all semester, and I’ve worked in my classes to get a good grade, and I’ve earned the degree that I’m about to get. Nobody will ever tell me otherwise.

As much as BIC, and the entirety of my college experience has taught me, it has also showed me that I still have a lot to learn, and there are still things about me that I’m learning about and learning to accept and appreciate. Because of my English minor, I’ve read and discussed so many fantastic books from American and British literature that I never would have read otherwise, and I never would have experienced appreciation for my writing in a creative writing class. Because of BIC, I’ve learned more than I could have ever hoped for about the world around me. I’ve listened to, read about, and talked about morals, politics, religion, culture, art, classic literature, justice and injustice, and so much more. I’ve been challenged like never before and have actually enjoyed it for once. I’ve especially loved the World Cultures classes, for pretty much everything I’ve been shown and taught, although I still think we might be able to do without World Cultures 3. I honestly have very little to complain about when it comes to my experience with BIC. Some courses were hard, and I had to make the schedule for my major and minor work around my BIC schedule several times, but it all worked out fine in the end. My procrastination, unfortunately, hasn’t gotten much better, but I’ve figured out how to work around it and put it to good use. BIC, and all of its field trips, have even started inspiring me to explore more and more of America. I’ve so far traveled my parents on a road trips around states such as New Mexico, Nevada, and California, and I intend to branch out even further as more chances arise. This last BIC yoga class as a capstone course finished it off wonderfully, giving me a true workout to shake off my laziness, surrounding me with fun and open-minded people, finishing my college career off with a nice de-stressor, and teaching me yet another way that I can be truly at peace with myself. It is just nice to know that amongst all the self-imposed and media-imposed low self-esteem issues, there are still such influential teachings and options out there that just want you to feel good, find happiness within yourself, and be a good person.

I’m still amazed with everything I’ve gone through and learned in just three and a half years here. It was so much more than I was expecting, and I definitely would not dare to change anything about it. There’s no way I’ll stop here, either. Graduation, as intimidating as it is, is only the end of this chapter and the start of a new one. I’m intimidated, even scared, because almost nothing has hurt me more than feeling like I have failed myself or someone important to me, but I’m excited to, and hopeful. I want to go places, make experiences and memories happen, meet new people, have fun, build up my self-confidence, and be a good person. I want to listen to stories, tell stories, and write stories. I hope to make my life something meaningful, something I can someday look back upon with a smile. So much has happened and changed, and it’s all about to end; yet it is only the beginning. Cheesy, I know, but it really is a cool feeling.