Chapter Fourty-One: Looking Back (~jinghan)

I guess it was the nostalgia attached to finishing my classes for the year, but I decided to skim through my first few posts of this year. And found this:

And this, after escaping the rehearsal, was how I found myself travelling home at 7:27pm after my first day at university, feeling like reality had slapped me in the face a little too hard. I certainly wasn’t in high school any more, I told my imaginary Toto. Before the summer I had thought that I knew exactly who I was and my place in the world, but now that I realised the world was hell of a lot bigger than I thought I felt like I had been knocked back to square one. I didn’t know who I was or who I wanted to be. Never had I felt so young and ignorant.

It was what I had written at the end of my first day of uni. So much has changed. Exactly everything I wrote then has changed.

Compared to day one there’s a comfortable familiarity to the journey to and from uni. As I walk around uni, there’s a comfortable familiarity in the surroundings. There’s a comfortable familiarity in the people that I see, smile and wave at. There’s a comfortable familiarity to the feel of being in my own skin.

It’s only when I read those early posts again that I realised: I have changed. My view of the world has changed. And it’s not an unpleasant realisation at all.

I came into uni feeling “young and ignorant” and not having a clue where I fit in, in this bigger, more real world. I have to admit that I chose Science at Melbourne because it was the easy and obvious option. I knew I didn’t want to do commerce, or medicine, or arts – they were just things I had no passion for. I was a bit interested in IT but not willing to declare it the cornerstone of my life yet, nor willing to let go of maths because it came so easily to me. What else was I going to do but Science at Melbourne? It was the perfect course for me, one that would buy me time to think about the consequences of life more seriously, while letting me dabble in all the things that I thought I liked without forcing me to decide what I would do for the rest of my life. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. The idea of saying something out loud, putting it down concretely scared me shitless. Sure there were expectations, everyone, including myself, had their expectations of me, but expectation is not the same as having a vision for your future.

But now? I have a vision. And it makes me feel empowered. For once, I’m not avoiding it. For once, the more I think about it, the more sure I feel that it is what I want to do. I want to teach. I want to teach! I shall shout it out from the roof of the Richard Berry building without fear: I want to teach! I want to know topics so well that students can have absolute faith in me. I want to inspire young people, not only to learn, but to discover things about themselves. I want to show people that they can enjoy things that they thought were out of their reach (maths!).

And yet, without everything that happened in this year, I could not have reached this conclusion. I needed this year to clear my head of petty academic goals, and to really think about my life. My favourite quote from the film, The Curious Case of Benjamine Button: “… and to think I was actually getting paid for something I would have happily done for free*.” I think it is the perfect expression of what happiness should be. So long as I have a place to live and enough food to survive, I’d teach for nothing, and be happy and feel perfectly myself. It surprises and excites me that I feel so sure about this now, when I was so unsure at the beginning of the year. I don’t know how many times I had said to people “uh.. maybe I want to go into teaching afterwards, but I guess I have three years to work it out.” before I realised that I didn’t need the three years.

What made me realise? I think it was just being at uni. Just being around people with big ambitions, people with humble ambitions, people not afraid to think about reality in a concrete way. Being around people who were as passionate about the same subjects as me, which allowed me to learn to be comfortable with myself. Because that was the real hurdle wasn’t it? Allowing myself to realise who I am. Who I really want to be. I was scared that if I said, ” I want to teach secondary-school maths” people would try and convince me that I could do better than that. But it wasn’t what I said that mattered but how I said it. And now, I can say it with such conviction that it wouldn’t even occur to anyone to persuade me otherwise. Or if they do, it wouldn’t shake my resolution at all.

Back in day one I had never felt more “young and ignorant” but now I’ve never felt so excited about life. Getting out there and putting my mark on the world. I’m learning stuff for the beauty and love of it. I’m gathering knowledge so that one day I may create my own. That young and ignorant me still has a long way to go, but I think I’ve grown up a lot in just this year.

Back in day one of classes I was exhausted and scared travelling home form uni at 7:27pm. Tonight, on the last day of classes I was still at uni at 9:15pm, after performing with the Student Union Voices Chior for the Union Theatre awards night. I turn to my friends, one of them a friend I’m still close with from back in high school, one of them a new friend I met just this semester but have already come to know really well, and I ask them, “Hey do you want to go to Lygon Street and get some ice-cream?”

And we walk out into the warm night air, and what a beautiful night it is in deed to end the semester on.

Note from the Author: Stay posted, I’m doubting that this blog addiction of mine will go away that easily. I’m sure this will not be the last post you’ll get from me.

*working on a tug boat for six pence a day