As paper writing and exam time come to an end, and the first green shoots appear on the trees over the Grote Looiersgracht, it is once again time for Reflection week. The first time you do anything is often the best. There is nothing quite like the first time you fall in love, and although there are many later pleasures and rewarding relationships to be had, the first time of any experience is special. University life is like this too; your very first semester is a thrilling plunge into the unknown. You wonder if you can keep up, actually write that first paper, can pass that exam, and be alive at the end of it. Every tutorial is an exciting meeting of minds, for which meticulous preparation is essential, and you even cluster. But as you go along, you realize that you actually can pass the exam. After writing 5 papers, you pretty much have the basic idea down. You figure out how much effort you need put in to get what grade, and that you can get away with skimming the Hegel. Somehow that space cadet glow of the first period turns into a sort of mwhah-yeah-whatever-just keep going on autopilot mood. But as life becomes more of the same, it also gets harder to do something truly different. After all, what you are doing seems to be working. It has gotten you where you are, and it’s actually pretty comfortable. Plus, letting your GPA slip would somehow invalidate all the effort you invested before. Starting over would be an awful waste, and who knows, maybe whatever else you might do would not work out, and then where would you be? So, this Reflection week, why not take a day or two to clean? Clean your room, wash all your clothes, tighten the screw on your glasses, degrease your laptop screen, sort your books into topical and alphabetical order, and above all, throw stuff away. The most important piece of furniture in your house is the garbage bin; it’s where the innovation starts. Throw away old notes, old sketches, dying plants. Clean out your email and downloads, take all the icons on your desktop, and put them all in a folder named “Previous stuff”. If you dont access it for 3 weeks, get rid of it. Throw away all those almost empty jars in the fridge. Throw away old socks with holes in them. Look at everything and keep only the things you really care about. As everything in your life passes through your hands, maybe you will find there is little you want to keep. Getting rid of it will help you move on. But, more likely, if you take the time to think about it, there will be many things you want to hang on to, even if you had forgotten why. And suddenly life’s new again, you remember why you loved it in the first place. It’s not a chore, something you have to do because there’s nothing else you could imagine doing. It’s simply who you are and what you do. And the drag once more becomes a march. Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice, but to carry on.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:03:47 +0000
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