I’ve never really gotten the saying, “April showers bring May flowers” – as someone who grew up on the California coast, it really only ever showered around December or January in the heart of winter. But this year, I get it more than ever, with hail near Valentine’s Day and rain continuing to visit after the passing of daylight savings time.
It feels nice in a way; a sort of cleansing, a rebirth, a reminder that there’s always still time to refresh and emerge anew. It was certainly needed.
As Winter quarter closes and Spring quarter emerges, it’s time for me to take inventory of what I have now and what I want by the end of my first year at UCI; first of all, I’m very excited for spring, particularly the courses I will be taking during it. I made a careful plan and put a lot more thought into what courses I wanted to take this quarter, only to scrap it all once restrictions dropped and I got into the classes I actually should be taking if I want to change my major. I wasn’t expecting to get into these classes – it took me five minutes to fight past the WebReg lag – so I’m more excited than ever to actually take them. I’ve heard some of them can be quite difficult, so my academic goal for this quarter is to remain engaged; after years of being a student, of studying studying itself and trying to figure out how to minimize the amount of effort I have to put in, I realized that the easiest way to learn is to simply try. It’s not easy for me to sit and focus for long periods of time, but I find that I have the easiest time learning when I actually sit down and grapple with the material when I’m supposed to (read: during lectures). So, I’m going to do my best to not get too distracted in any of my classes.
As I’m still in the process of winding down from Winter quarter, I only have one other tentative goal to speak into existence: I want to be bored more often. I realized that I have a tendency to fill spaces that don’t need to be filled, either by putting on music or by opening a random social media app and scrolling. Instead of keeping my mind engaged through low-effort activities like this, I’d rather let my mind hit absolute zero for a few minutes, as it’ll be easier for me to pick myself up and do something that makes me feel better than whatever I was doing before that.
Those are my goals as of now; for now, I’m going to focus on enjoying the upcoming week and doing a bit of spring cleaning – physically, digitally, and mentally – and letting myself return anew for the next quarter. I’ll talk to you all soon!