In looking back on the past year, I've found that I am quite a different person. I'm in a new life place now that I'm in the middle of doing the college thing, and that's so far from the transition stage I was in last summer. I know what I'm doing at school, am forming a larger and larger life plan, and feel increasingly farther from my elementary/middle/high school experiences and self.
I always felt, even at very young ages, that I am old or mature or whatever the term is. I remember when 5 felt old, then 10, on and on and even now in these birthdays of young adulthood, it doesn't feel that young, but I certainly don't have my 5-year-old delusions of elderliness I used to have.
It really hit me these last two days that I spent at speech camp. I attended this forensics camp in it's first year, when I was 15. Since then, I have been a guest coach and a counselor, so I know my way around this week ling program. In working with the students, who were 12, 13, and 14 years old, (that's middle school/high school freshmen) I felt so much older than them. It was the generations of speechies that I could see descending from the coaches, mentors, and captains of years past, and being off the team for one year made me feel disconnected from the reality of these students. It was sad. Even one of my best friends, a real counselor and my first speech mentee, said that I seemed older. It's just part of growing up.
But more than no longer bing in middle school or high school, because I was ready to leave those years behind when I did, I'm just in a new and transitory life place. I've got nearly total independence and have to manage my life entirely on my own when I'm at school, and mostly on my own when I'm at home. I've made choices I never thought I'd make and tried new things I never even knew existed. I have a newly discovered need to travel and see the world because it's just seeming smaller and smaller. I'm ready for theory to become concrete.
And yet, it's still shocking and scary to realize both how far I've come, how far I have yet to go, and the implications of the life choices I make. What I'm doing now matters in a way that things have never mattered before, and that magnitude is a fascinating and awe-inspiring challenge to meet.
I feel older vecaue I am older, but I'm still young and have a whole bunch more choices to make and life stages to reach. And in a few years I'll read this old blog and marvel at how young and naive I was then. It'll be fun :)
Today is awesome because I saw friends at speech camp, theater camp, and writers' group.
Meters Swum: 1,600
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