One of the greatest challenges in life is to discover who you truly are, especially at the young ages where life is the most impressionable. Trying to make the monumental decisions like, "what am I doing with my life" force you to look into yourself and discover what you are made of. Even more than what you are made of, it's looking at what you believe and what you are about. I remember writing my "This I believe" paper for my senior Quest For Meaning class... one of the first explorations of who I truly am and what I believe and make out of this life and these experiences. I've learned even more this year as I settle into a year abroad, a new start and a new direction. So as I try to remake myself I begin to figure out who I am a bit more every day. I now know that I am truly a people person, that being around others is a great energy I feed off of and want to find the direction that keeps me around great company. But I also know that as much as I love the United States, living abroad has become a definition of myself. It is something that I have come to love, because every experience is new and gives you a fresh perspective on why I do things the way I do-- forcing me to look and understand "my way." And the new perspective, well, it's like a kid in a candy shop, wide eyed and ever excited, so for a kid who doesn't want to grow up, this is a great feeling!
I couldn't help but think today back onto my Eckerd experiences and how they have brought me to where I am today. At the same time I wish that I could go back taking all this "grownup" wisdom and begin Autumn Term and freshman year again. Funny how such a fulfilling experience can also leave you knowing there were things you missed, things to change, but hey, I guess that's a part of growing up. So it's what I like to call the wisdom of wishing, wishing you could take today's wisdom back to the yesterdays, but that's the beauty of life; you can take the experiences you've had and build on them to make the next ones even better! So that's the wisdom of wishing... we all grow, it's just a question of what we enjoy in the meantime.
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