Our senior editors were offered the chance to write a reflective essay to leave with the student body as they approach graduation. Below is Sara’s reflection on chasing your dreams–all of your dreams.
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I’ve spent the last four years of my life learning a new art form. Juggling. Except, I don’t juggle with balls, bowling pins, or knives. I juggle with people, places, and the small pieces that make me who I am.
It’s an art that consists of being able to simultaneously wake up early enough to meet all my deadlines and still go to bed late enough to feel like a normal teenage girl talking with her friends. Of running from one meeting to the other, while trying to make an impact in every club, every class, and every person I meet. Fitting every activity into my schedule like pieces in a puzzle that don’t match up, but somehow still fit together. It’s the art of balancing early student council meetings, musical rehearsals, dance classes, French conjugation quizzes, and AV deadlines—while still finding the time to sit cross legged on my friends’ cold floor, knees bruising, listening to them tell stories of summer adventures or failed romances. Being everywhere at once, and somehow still being me.
Some days I feel more like a page out of my pink floral planner than a person at all. A calendar. A to-do list. A never ending list of bullet points:
And yet, between those checked boxes, or crossed out to do’s, there are still moments that stop me dead in my tracks and make me feel like the world has stopped turning, as if I have all the time in the world. Moments like when I’m standing in the wings, behind those red velvet curtains, watching the pre-pros perform before me, watching the dust look like glitter because of the red and blue coloured lights, waiting for the music to start, waiting for my moment on stage, jumping up and down four times (my lucky ritual to get rid of nerves). Or when my teacher hands me back a paper, and her eyes linger just for half a second longer than usual before saying, “You really said something here.” Like maybe she sees me, really sees me, not just the version of me that gets things done.
I honestly think I’m scared of being seen. Scared that if someone looks truly in, they’ll notice I’m just trying to hold it together with bobby pins and borrowed confidence.
Whenever I share all the activities I’m involved in, I always get asked the same question: “You’re in everything; how do you do it?” And the answer is: I don’t know. I truly don’t.
So the real question, at least in my book, is not how I do it, but rather, why I do it. I do it out of fear. Fear of failure. Fear of missing out. Fear of not doing enough, or rather not being enough. It’s a constant fear that, at any given moment, I’ll just stop moving—stop filling in the lined paper of pink floral planner, my schedule, my calendar, my notebooks. That, instead, I’ll just have an empty space, a continuous silence of just me, myself, and I.
I do it because I’m scared. But, I also do it because I genuinely love everything I do; it would be my biggest heartache to choose one thing.
I genuinely love school and learning, though, not homework and tests. I love all the clubs I’m a part of, just maybe not the running around from meeting to meeting. And most importantly, I love everyone I’ve met these past two years at Grier.
The reason why I do so much is because I love that I have the chance to experience different things and be with multiple people at the same time.
I love the feeling of opening a book and falling into a world where I can envision myself as the main character. Of entering a class and walking out a little different. Of being a dancer on Mondays, a Vice President on Tuesdays, a Secretary General on Wednesdays, a journalist on Thursdays, and a news reporter on Fridays.
I’m addicted to experiencing new things. To reinventing myself. To possibility.
To waking up and asking: Who do I want to be today? That’s the part I haven’t said out loud.
This isn’t just about proving something to others (though, let’s be honest, I do that too.) It’s about proving to myself that I can be more than one thing; I can fuel all my passions. I can be messy and brilliant, unsure and committed, soft and powerful.I don’t have to shrink myself in order to fit one title, one path, one life.
But sometimes, it feels like that’s what the world expects. As if everyone is holding a megaphone over our heads and saying: Choose. Choose a college, Choose your major. Choose your job. Choose your label. As if being well-rounded is just another fancy way of saying “unfocused.” But I don’t want to be one thing. I want to be a thousand different things tied together with a yellow bow. I want to write, and lead, and perform, and create, and explore, and still have time to just be me.
So, this is also a thank you. To the teachers who never told me to choose, who let me jump from ballet barres, to sewing machines, to Google Docs with half-written articles, and back again. To the friends who left snacks on my desk, waited for me after meetings, and loved me even when I forgot to text them back. To the hallways I walked over and over again rehearsing songs under my breath and marked dances. To the lawn where I’d sit and soak in the sun, letting the heat and sound waves coming from my speaker quiet the chaos in my head. To the mirror in the dance building where I once whispered, “You can do this,” and somehow believed it.
Thank you for giving me space to be everything. And nothing. And in-between. I don’t know where I’ll go next. Or who I’ll be next. But I hope that wherever it is, I’ll keep collecting pieces of the world and adding them to the puzzle I call life. Keep learning. Keep becoming. Because if I’ve learned anything these past years at Grier, it’s that I don’t have to be just one thing to be enough.
