HELLO FELLOW UBC-ERS!!
Despite now being on the cusp of entering my third week, the first still permeates my being with all the vivacious intensity of the sun’s rays upon the skin during this blissfully sunny September. The initial awkwardness of my fellow seniors froshees as we were led around our new home, transitioned to the raucous roars and soaring speeches of the Pep rally. And though it instilled in me, at the time, a sense of awe and wonder, retrospect has allowed me to realize that the day simply marked the start of what is to be a windy journey up a mountain… Windy in the sense that, though I may be tossed and turned, the general trend will be ever upward, as I join the other thousands of flecks of blowing snow creaping inexorably up the mountainside, as individuals who will become more contemplative, critical, and considerate of the world around us.
Though it may be merely the end of my second week in this confusing maelstrom of a place that calls itself UBC, it’s all too easy to deceive myself that I’ve been living here for a lifetime. Much like a dream, during which you believe yourself to be fully in control, but upon waking you think to yourself that the dream could not have possibly been yours, so my first two weeks here seem to have been the memories of somebody else. Running along Wreck Beach in the early hours of the morning (it really is quite surreal during the low tide in the morning, amidst the sun’s slanting rays, go for it!!), and with friends, going to a meeting of the Toastmasters speech club and spinning a crazy improv about my feelings about being a toilet (yes, they do have feelings too!!), and seeing a monstrous zucchini be dropped from the ceiling during physics class; all of these new experiences seem to be those of someone else with an uncanny penchant for the spontaneous.
But it would be rather narcisstic of me to miss out on the most important thing: is the people around me, who have truly animated and enlivened these first few days of university of life. Whether it be pointing me in the right direction to an obscure building on campus, or responding to my questions in class with eagerness and a smile, you are the heroes of my world. For what do we have in life, if not the little moments of contentment? And most of all, the moments to be shared.
In the near future, I’ll be posting about all sorts of things that capture my attention, which is pretty much everything a lot. Running, nutrition, science, literature, academics, campus life; that’s all on the radar, and more! As was so excuberantly said to us on Imagine Day, memento mori.
Remember you will die.
Everything is so interesting, and there’s oh so little time to take it all in. As the quote on my sparkling new poster-sale poster pointed out, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain, you sir are a genius.
