A Recap of Sorts
hello again & way back then!
My only excuse is that I let myself get carried away by life.
I let myself get carried away by the beautiful sequence of being back home with family, settling into a new school year, reconnecting with old friends while building new, and stressing over coursetable.
A whirlwind as it was I think I have reached a point in the semester where it's probably time to start writing again. So. Here I am in the Trumbull courtyard (and in the good life center + in my bed because this blog was not written in one sitting), in September, piecing together this final recap from summer. To be fair, some, if not most, of the thoughts came from my notes app during the plane ride from Taiwan mixed with present-day commentary.
Part 1: The Gift of Time
I think the question that gets tossed around most during the first week is “How was your summer”. To which, I usually respond with “Good!. Taiwan was wonderful”. It's funny because I find it hard to encapsulate a summer in a passing conversation … yet even if I had all the time or space of a blog I am not quite sure if I could. This is my attempt lol.
I wrote this on the plane ride back but I think the biggest gift this summer gave me was time. With my first time living off campus, in a random apartment in a new foreign city with only 3 hours of class a day, it was probably the most freedom I had ever had.
This might seem silly or perhaps even obviously intuitive, yet the endless stream of time also gave me the choice on how to fill the time. It's not that I don’t make decisions about time at Yale or in High School but it's largely structured around my classes, busses, dining hall hours, etc. Also detached from the reality of prices (thank you Dr.Light)…. Taiwan really felt like my oyster to explore.
As I took 6 hour bus rides across the country, started this blog, home stayed with strangers, talked and befriended strangers in random yoga and hip hop classes (in chinese crazy!), started google map reviewing, hung out with new friends, went up a mountain for a sunrise, and forced myself out and about most days – it was honestly perhaps, the most myself, I felt for a while. I didn’t really think about what others thought, I just simply did.
Maybe it was easier because there was no way a person I knew would be in my beginner's hip-hop class or because the time to explore Taiwan felt “finite” but I am glad I did.
This summer, the gift of time prompted me to not only fill it but also make intentional choices on how to fill it and through that, I learned more about myself. These aren’t realizations that will make the front page of the New York Times but have fundamentally shifted how I have been making decisions. Especially as I started looking more into what I want to do post-college, it certainly gave me a compass of sorts.
I also think it's fair to say that not everything is as whimsical as it sounds or written or seems. Whether that was drifting of groups, exhaustion of heat, or what not. But in complete honesty that hasn’t really changed how I view Taiwan or the summer. Not quite sure but something about detaching the meaning of an experience to the reality of it (!).
Part 2: Being Back at Yale
I have always loved journaling (more on blog post #1), but this summer I learned to express (hopefully these blogs are somewhat follow through-able) and think through words on Substack. Writing these blogs was so cathartic because I would be writing and it would hit me just why this summer meant what it meant, or why I found love in that hike and so forth.
I am hoping to continue blogging at Yale because I am so convinced that time at Yale moves in a different time zone – one that often doesn’t include as much writing as I would like. A time zone that catches you in a way that is so beautiful , warping and immersive. A place where day feels long, yet a week feels like a millisecond, but a month feels like a year and a year feels like a day.
Recapping the past month feels like a tall order and I haven’t been doing the best and keeping daily gratitudes so perhaps I will just write about the first thing that comes to my mind … which was my OIS dinner today :) We did a family reunion dinner for the first time since we last said goodbye at orientation. At the dinner, one guy mentioned “I was secretly looking forward to this”.
That phrase quite literally made my heart smile. I think in the midst of the time warping of Yale – the next PSET, meeting, and meal plan – I often treasure yet lose sight of heart-smiling phrases or small moments. Something to work on for sure.
This blog was a little all over & not too sure if it made sense at all but for the sake of starting to write & committing to that – I’m just going to publish it here :)
love,
hiroko
Question: what is something that made your heart smile this week?
I’m crashing at a friends place and he has the most comfortable pillow