Reflecting on GSE + First Month of Senior Year

Reflection

Well that passed quickly.

5.5 weeks of friends, middle school-esque dances, and academic immersion in a subject that I am passionate about. All of it was more blissful and rewarding than I could have hoped for.

Sure, at times, I wished I was at home. Or, at least, with my friends from home, experiencing my last high school summer as it ‘should be.’ But in the week that I’ve been home, I’ve realized that the community forged at GSE was truly special.

Many of the T/ACs, as GS alums, warned us that going back to ‘the real world’ would be hard. While the transition was not hard, per se, it was, and is, hard to relate to people, to friends, outside of the GSE community. As we, the students (now alums), spent those 6-ish weeks expanding our minds and living in a constant state of learning, trying to absorb every ounce of new knowledge and genuinely paying attention to new perspective, going back to the quotidian, in which not everyone has the same regard and passion for thought and discussion, has been frustrating.

Not that my friends or the people around me are dumb, because they are not. They too desire enlightenment and discussion and an open mind, but the culture created at GSE promoted these things and, unfortunately, the same can not be held true for the majority of other places and groups in our lives.

And so, for that I am grateful. To have lived and loved and learned so much about myself, others, and the world. The GSE community and character will remain special and unique to summer 2018, during which we danced, we philosophized, we tried to make sense of Area II, and we suffered through the sevens days without the soft serve machine.

Senior Year

I was genuinely anticipating the return to school and structured days. How mistaken I now feel. When I anticipated the start of the school year, I was also naively expecting everyone else to have undergone the same transformation over the summer, to have a school-wide enthusiasm for discussion and learning. Unfortunately, public school is simply not structured for the type of ubiquitous enthusiasm and curiosity, the raw and unending excitement for learning that Governor’s School promoted and provided. That said, I am doing my best to keep in touch with the desire to learn that I further developed over the summer, even as I approach JUNIOR YEAR 2.0: The College App Edition.

Balancing senioritis, course load, college applications, and sports is somehow proving to be more difficult, or at least more mentally taxing than junior year. While there have not been any breakdowns yet, the stress of simultaneously seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and knowing that I have a full planner makes the occurrence imminent. Oh, well, c’est la vie. The most important thing, at the moment, is to not lose sight of the end goals I have set for myself while not getting too caught up in it as to not feel alive. I’ll check in after I submit my college apps and reevaluate.

Updates soon, I guess 🙂

xx