untitled blog post draft

**I wrote this in the early days of Jan 2014 as the blog suggests.  This was a blog post I never finished but I found insightful looking back.  I thought it was fine to just post it as it is.  A moment in time. (: 

Rewind: April 4, 2013

"All this while I have always believed in standing up for true education, in challenging what the majority says is "right", getting arts and science equally weighted, actually giving my heart back to society and stalwartly believing that a letter grade on a sheet of paper does not define who you are as a person.  Reflecting on all that I have been through made it even clearer to me that this is who I am and this is what I stood for.  And I felt there was a college that embodied this.

When I asked myself what I wanted for the next stage of my life, I found myself wanting to take the road less travelled by (again); to seek learning beyond the classroom over studying for exams, to do things out of love instead of obligation, to fully explore how far my love for art can take me and to surround myself with people who shared this belief.  It reminded me of the first post I did upon completion of high school and I believe my dream has not changed.  My perspectives may have shifted and my self coarsened but my vision remains: To be able to look back on my life and truly say that I have lived it to the fullest; I have made the most of what was laid before me because I had the courage to stand up for what I believed in. 

To be able to look back and proudly say, I did not regret a thing."

Play: January 11, 2014

It has been close to a year since I wrote the post above.  A lot of things have happened since then.

Play again: February 13, 2014; 4.26 am
(this was the time recorded on my notepad but later on in this draft I mention a different time--I'm suspecting this was written in two chunks)

So, here I am sitting in the library.  I was in the midst of drafting an essay about my college-going and applying experience--essentially, how I ended up here.  Everything was fine until midway through, so many memories and thoughts came flooding back and became too overwhelming, leading to a brain freeze.  I ditched my word pad and decided to resort to pen my feelings down.  In the moment.  I am still extremely overwhelmed with the collection of all these memories and layers of identity that have been part of my journey.  I also realized that I have not blogged in a long time.  I have been missing; at least, my story-telling self from the blogging world has been absent.  I think part of it is because I have been earnestly trying to avoid the ultimate question I always ask myself when I write these things:

Where do I begin?

As I am telling you this story, I am midway through the beginning of my second semester at Hampshire College.  It is 3.17 p.m. and I am blaming my recent Skype conversation with my three friends from my old Lit class for causing my difficulty in getting back into the zone of completing papers and focusing on the upcoming lessons of my classes.  I have been thinking a lot about what has changed and where the markers are in each of our individual roads.  At present, I am ruminating if it would be worth it to go to the Bridge Cafe to snag some sushi and juice for dinner on the bus to my only class for today, Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) training class, 6 pm - 10 pm.  I look back at the window and I see the snow-covered grass—tomorrow, another snow storm is predicted, they say.  I take a mental note to try stay in my dorm room tomorrow.  It is winter, my first one in college and my second one in America.  I still have not gotten used to the cold.