BY: MARLIN RAMOS
There's one month of summer left. Yup, just one. So I'm sure a lot of us are asking ourselves right now, "What did I do this summer?" Surely, you will be asked this question a million times by people you barely know during small talk (or by some really concerned and lovely friends!). So the question is, what have you done?
The culture at AU can be one that's very overwhelming and anxiety producing. In a sea of over-achievers, it's easy to feel like a little fish that's not doing enough. Especially when you didn't accomplish all the things you wanted to this summer,but the key to solving this knot in your stomach is to simply JUST DO IT ✔.
You probably had a list of things you were eager to accomplish this summer I bet you couldn't wait for finals to be over for some much needed organization and TLC ✨. And guess what, it's still not too late if you haven't gotten the ball rolling.
Beginning of the summer I had three goals, 1. Get involved in my community, 2. Stack that paper for the fall semester $$$ and 3. Work on my mental health and the WHOLE ME. After spending all of June broke, and complaining about what major to finally commit to (don't worry majors freak a lot of us out, but that's a separate conversation), I decided to get up and do something. I got a gym membership, sent some emails, volunteered at some places, reached out to former teachers, researched organizations and had coffee with some people from my past.
Eventually, I finally started to work at the place I had intended to, got a side babysitting job from a former teacher, got denied from an internship I really wanted, got offered an internship from someone I had coffee with, learned to eat my vegetables and worked on getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night. And how did I do all of this? By pushing myself out of my comfort zone and connecting with the people that were already apart of my life and community.
Now it's August, and I still haven't accomplished all of my goals, but I know I still have time to and so do you. Living in Trump's America and in a pre-apocalyptic climate change world, we really don't have time to waste. There so much we can do to take control of our own lives and it starts with confronting our fears. Specifically our fear of failure or the unknown. The less we freak out about the things we're not doing, the more we start to do them. So on this first week of August, set a precedent for the rest of the month and carry that same energy over to the Fall to make this semester worth it.
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