Acintya Shenoy, Week #3: I Went To The Woods
...because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
To a select few cultured individuals, these words ring a familiar bell—they are among the opening words of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, an account of solitary living in the wilderness that has, among other things, served as the motto of American High School’s Dead Poets Society. Thoreau reminds us to confront the basic aspects of life, casting away our premonitions about man-made society and civilization.
It is these simple words that prove the most difficult to hear.
As juniors in high school, this year is a grand, chaotic cacophony—AP classes, clubs, practices, employment, internships, college applications…and more. We step into a world where we are no longer seen as children, with all the time in the world; now, we are adults in training, and we better start acting like it immediately.
I won’t go into detail about my commitments and turn this post into a Common App draft. Yet it rings universal for passionate-turned-desolate juniors who are drowning in an increasingly competitive and stressful academic environment: this is too much.
Yesterday, I attended a FLEX session at DPS for the very first time (potlucks don’t count). For most of my high school career, FLEX has been synonymous with stress (ha! that rhymes!)—writing paragraphs due the next period, teaching people who missed rehearsal, or cramming for a test have been the hallmarks of the ways I spend the only “free time” of the school day.
Yesterday, I broke free of that mentality. I allowed school and college and my GPA and my CV to vanish from my brain, and I filled that empty space with joy—the joy of creating, of connecting, and of lighthearted freedom.
Stepping out of Portable E after the bell rang instantly brought me back to School Mode™, but it was still a period of forty-five minutes I’ll never forget. It was a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stifled daily schedule, a reminder of why we truly live.
College is still a pivotal part of my life journey—there’s nothing I love more than learning (at the moment), and building independence as a human being, much like how Thoreau did hundreds of years ago in the Canadian wilderness, is a milestone I’m excited to cross.
Yet, when the excitement warps into pressure and anxiety, and I don’t understand who or what I do all that I do for anymore, I remember that I’m still just a student—a student who learns what life has to teach, so that when I die, I will know that I have lived.
The notebook cover I decorated during the DPS session on September 22nd.
Evidently, it is still unfinished.
Acintya, you have no idea how relieving it is to hear someone else describe the weight the Common App holds above all of us; it is so known that everyone is experiencing it that I feel like we barely talk about it anymore. I am so happy that you were able to find something you truly enjoy that is not for the sole purpose of adding another extra curricular activity or club to the list. I love how you tie your whole blog back to the quote that you introduced at the beginning; it really brings the piece full circle.
ReplyDeleteHi Acintya! I loved how you referenced things from the book Walden continuously throughout your blog. I personally have never read it but from the opening lines it seems like a good book that I will have to check out. I can really relate to those stressful FLEX periods filled with last minute studying and the feeling of constantly looking ahead and trying to fit everything you need for collages into the little time we have left. Im glad that you were able to find time to do something you enjoy and fall into a peacefully bubble, if only for a short while.
ReplyDeleteYES DEAD POETS SOCIETY MENTION!! Honestly, you saying that it was your very first DPS session caught me off guard, I swear I’ve seen you around more! Hearing you talk about the experience of walking out of the room and having the world fall back on you again was really relatable. I feel like it’s a universal experience that becomes more common as we grow up. I remember going on outings when I was younger and getting that weird feeling on the drive home, like my brain hadn’t caught up with the real world yet. But as you said, we’re young adults in training, and that comes with a bunch of new freedoms and pressures. But I’m glad that DPS exists to help us all remember why we truly live. I don’t think it would be “liv[ing] deliberately” if we were constantly playing catch up with the world.
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