“An open letter to the recent graduate,

You have spent years carrying wrought iron anchors around your ankles, blistering your fingertips in feeble attempts to undo their rigid sailor knots one by one. But darling, you forget the knives in your pockets. You are so much more than double majors and grade point averages and master’s degrees. You are on a long road west to sunset, but your hands can steer and turn and pause and push and pull your way to glory. Spread your sails like a rose stretches her limbs to the sunlight. There is heaven on your horizon. Whatever it takes—burning your eyes with salt water, cutting your feet on the bow, sailing blindly into a midnight monsoon—whatever it takes, go to it. Meet your dandelion dreams at sunrise, and never look back.”

– Eveline St. Lucia

Drop Everything & Travel: In Defense of Young Recklessness

My first real experience with travel was after I had graduated from high school. I hadn’t decided what my direction in life was going to be; I thought 17 was far too young an age to decide what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I decided to take some time off to figure out who I was, learn more about the world around me. So while my friends were picking out which university courses to enroll in, I was picking out which countries I was going to go to. I ended up spending three months backpacking through South East Asia with two of my friends. We spent time in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, and Brunei. Since then, I have spent a month in Costa Rica by myself, a couple of weeks in London with a friend, two weeks road-tripping to California, and a month in Vietnam with my boyfriend. All of these trips have been beautiful, fun, revealing, enriching. They have all been amazing in completely different ways.

I went for coffee with Alana, one of the girls I went to Asia with, a couple of days ago and we started reminiscing about our trip. It’s been four years since we went; naturally, a lot has changed. We talked about the time we had no plans on Halloween so we decided to get tattoos; how our only plan was to walk around and find the cleanest looking studio for us to get them done in; how we went swimming again only a couple of days afterward. We talked about how often we partied, how we were drunk for the majority of our trip. We talked about all the strangers we met, stayed with, kissed. We talked about the night we completely blacked out and got separated and spent the next two days sick and exhausted. We talked about how completely absurd all of that sounds to us now.

We’re both still in our very early twenties; we haven’t become boring (well, she hasn’t at least) but we have grown up a little bit. We’ve both travelled since then and our experiences have been different every time. My month in Costa Rica was solitary and a time of personal exploration; while I did meet a couple of people in different towns, I spent most of my time on my own. I read, wrote, fell asleep on beaches almost everyday. Alana and I went to London together as well; we spent a lot of time walking around the city, sightseeing, visiting all of the historical landmarks (and Harry Potter filming locations, obviously). We made friends in our hostel, met up with old ones. We stayed in the same hostel the entire time, walked down the same street to get to the tube every morning, bought coffee at the same cafe. By the end of the trip, we felt like we had a new home there and we loved feeling that way. Adam and I spent our month in Vietnam wandering around different towns, trying to find the best used bookstore in each one. We ended up loving one of the towns so much that we stayed there for half of our trip. And for the first time since I’ve started travelling, food was an important aspect of our trip; we loved trying new dishes, looking for different restaurants to try every night.

My point is, travelling often changes as you get older. At the least, it changes depending on which stage of your life you’re currently in, what you’re going through, who you’re with. You’re going to have a different experience with every new adventure. Alana and I talked about how there are so many people who disapprove of taking time off school to travel, how there were so many people who looked down on us for doing so, and how they doubted our ability to live (what they thought was) a productive and successful life afterward. Almost every single one of those people have told me that their plan is (and my plan should be) to travel after they’ve graduated from university, that it’s more mature, reasonable, smart. It’s difficult to argue against that; it does seem more logical. And while I obviously haven’t experienced waiting until completing a degree to travel, I do have the experience of deciding to go beforehand. And it’s been an incredible one. So as a 20-something who’s been traveling steadily for the past four years, allow me to argue in favour of travelling before you go back to school or taking time off from school to travel. Allow me to defend young recklessness and wandering.

I can’t provide you with percentages and surveys and I can’t tell you with absolute certainty what is statistically accurate. But I can tell you what has been true of my experience. I can tell you this: I know of too many adults in my life who waited to travel the world and never have. I can tell you that I speak to more people on a daily basis who are envious of my travels than people who can relate to them, that I hear far too often of how fast life progresses after university toward real responsibilities, a career, a family. I can tell you that I have never once spoken to anybody who has decided to cast off responsibilities, step out of their comfort zone, go against what was expected of them to travel and regretted it.

I can tell you that stepping onto a plane going to the other side of the world when you’re 17-years-old is an incredibly unique experience; that it is both terrifying and thrilling; that you will feel so brave, so invincible; that you will never forget the texture of that moment. I can tell you that there are fears and inhibitions that you have not yet developed at seventeen and that you should take advantage of that; sometimes the best memories come from not thinking twice, from not looking before you leap. I can tell you that sunrises on a beach in Thailand, while not any less marvelous, will feel vastly different when you’re young and naive and immature; when you and your friends are still a little drunk on a boat back to the island your hostel is on; when you have paint on your face and glowsticks around every appendage; when you’re exchanging foggy memories of loud music, dancing in bare feet, and kissing someone in the ocean. I can tell you that travelling at a young age forces you into independence, challenges you, changes you, and I can tell you that that is important and invaluable. I can tell you that there are things you learn about the world and about yourself that are better lived in perpetual movement than in stagnation, that I have learned more in months of travelling than I have in two years of post-secondary education.

I know that this is not the path that everyone will travel on, or even needs to. I know that there are incredible experiences and unforgettable memories that people gain from travelling on other paths, like going to university or trade school or working right out of high school. But if you are on the edge, if your heartstrings are even only slightly pulling you toward an adventure into a great unknown, just book your flight and don’t look back. There are many things that people regret at the end of their lifetime, but I have never once met someone who regretted exploration and adventure. I’m not saying that this isn’t something you can’t achieve as you get older, but I am saying that there is something uniquely beautiful and transformative about travelling when you’re young. I wish upon every young person coming into their own the hazy memories of stumbling hand-in-hand with people you love through streets littered with illuminated lanterns, the memory of watching the sunset on a beach by yourself and letting go of everything in your life you didn’t need in order to be happy.

I can’t say it any better than how Jason Mraz once wrote it on his own blog: “You were not born here to work and pay taxes. You were put here to be part of a vast organism to explore and create. Stop putting it off.” So quit your job, take a couple of years off from school. Contrary to what you are constantly hearing, you really are so young and you really do have so much time. Don’t feel rushed into anything you aren’t ready for and don’t put yourself in a position where one day you’ll wonder what might have been. Don’t settle for anything less than what will you make you extraordinarily happy.

Drop everything. Go on an adventure.

| alex

The Lost & Disheartened: I Wrote This For You

This has been my story for the past two years and I think it’s important for me to finally express it openly and honestly. I hope that you can find value within the next couple of paragraphs and I hope you can find comfort within them as well.

I took a year and a half off to travel after I graduated high school; I found that time incredibly rewarding and educational in a way I hadn’t anticipated. However, I started to feel pressure to go back to school almost immediately. It wasn’t necessarily direct (I rarely received criticism from friends who were students and my dad was endlessly supportive), but it was definitely there. I felt a constant cloud of expectation looming over my head and after awhile, I was just scared of being left behind. So I applied to the University of Calgary for English and Education and I was so excited to be starting a new chapter in my life. I also thought that being an english teacher was the best possible choice for me: I love reading and I love writing and I love interacting with people. I also love that you have an opportunity in an English classroom to teach students about love, life, loss, and hope through something as beautiful as literature. I began my studies in 2012.

It’s been almost two years since then – since I walked through the halls as a student for the first time, starry-eyed and inspired and hopeful for my future. It’s incredible what can change in two years. I sit here now, still a student of English and Education at the University of Calgary, feeling lost, hopeless, scared, and incredibly unhappy with where I am and what I am doing. I feel like I’m drowning, barely able to stay afloat; I feel consistently uninspired, unmotivated, and unfulfilled in the hallways of that school. I feel like my experience is dulling my senses, stifling my creativity. I feel like I’m simply a hollow, emptied version of myself as I drift between my classes being force-fed lectures that I neither find engaging or important. I feel so incredibly disheartened. I had this idea in my head of what my university experience would be like. It was bright and hopeful. And it was so beautiful. I thought it would take reading and writing, things I already deeply loved, and fuel my passion for them. I thought it would broaden my understanding and further ignite my curiosity. But it has taken my love and my passion and my curiosity and it has stripped them away.

Once I started writing university papers, I stopped writing for myself. The writing I had to do was much more standardized than I anticipated and I was only able to write about things I didn’t care about. Before I started school, I wrote every single day and it was often my sole comfort in times of darkness and heartache and confusion. I now must invest so much time and energy into writing things I don’t find important that I have very little time to write about things that are important. It has been an uphill battle for me to start writing again, one I don’t intend on losing this time around, but my GPA is suffering due to the time I’ve spent writing pieces that are meaningful to me. And it’s no secret that it’s extremely difficult to read for pleasure during the school year. As an English major, it’s required of me to be constantly reading. I anticipated that; I revelled in that. What I hadn’t prepared for was only ever reading dull novels, short stories, essays, and plays written by old, white men. I’ve learned by now that English majors “aren’t here to read for pleasure, but to read critically.” But I’ve started thinking that maybe I just enjoy reading for pleasure too much to be an English major. I have little time now to read things that are engaging; that educate and move me; that I find fulfilling; that make me think. I don’t think I should feel as foolish as I do now for assuming that those were the types of things I’d be reading in university.

{A couple of things to note before I continue: First of all, I know that this experience is mine only and that I’m most likely part of the minority for feeling this way. I know that many students feel fulfilled and happy with their experience. But I also know that I can’t be the only one who is feeling lost and confused and unhappy in regards to school, which is why I think it’s so important that I write this. Secondly, I had a friend assume that I was struggling with school just because I had been doing poorly and receiving negative feedback about my writing. This isn’t true. I earned an A+ on my first university paper and all of the marks I’ve received since then have hovered around that same grade point. I have, however, cared very little about the marks I’ve received; I haven’t been proud of any of the writing I’ve completed in university. Lastly, I started experiencing anxiety attacks within the first few weeks of my first year and they have yet to subside. Sometimes I will cry, struggling to breathe for hours at a time and it is exhausting and can leave me feeling empty for days. It’s been a point of embarrassment for me; my attacks make me feel weak and helpless. I sought out a therapist and attended sessions last year, but didn’t find them very helpful. I think it’s important to note that I’ve been trying very hard to stay afloat and I think it would be unfair to assume otherwise.}

Reading and writing are what shaped my identity before I started school and I’ve been sorely disappointed with how my experience has partially robbed me of that. I used to devour books, inhale the words like they were the air I breathed. I read books that inspired me and changed my life and made me a better person. I used to write constantly and it was within pages and through ink that I used to find solace. I had these passions that I could explore freely and openly and without hesitation or doubt because they were all mine and the world was mine to discover through them. And while I still have a deep affection for both, my life has been absent of that same passion since I began university. I feel like I’ve been stripped of some of the most important things that used to make me happy. And more than that, I feel like I’ve been stripped of things I loved so much that I considered them a part of me; so much so, that I don’t feel I have a strong sense of self anymore. I have lost myself in this experience as a university student and I find myself no longer being able to even function properly in realizing this.

So there are a couple of options for me to consider and I think they’re fairly obvious so I won’t go into too much detail. But the important part is that I do have a decision to make. And it’s not an easy one. My experience in university has made me question what I want to do with my life and the system that I’m a part of and who I am and what I’m capable of. It’s made me lose sense of who I am and in turn, has made me hate who I am. It’s created all these conflicting ideas about where I believe I’m supposed to be and what I believe I’m supposed to do. And I don’t know where to go from here.

The other day I came across this article on Thought Catalog and, while my experience has been quite different than Jaime’s, the final few paragraphs really comforted me:

“So, I hated college. I hated who I was in college and I hated how I lost my sense of self for such a long period of time. […] I needed a fresh start, and that’s okay.

If you’ve been unhappy for too long, you will eventually hit a wall. It’s a harsh reality check that confirms that not only do you want a change, you pretty much need it. It took me two and a half years to decide I deserve to be genuinely happy. I hope it doesn’t take you that long. Don’t be scared to make a change. Don’t be scared if it’s not what everyone else does.”

This wasn’t necessarily comforting because she made the decision to stop going to university and now I feel okay with doing the same. I still haven’t come to my conclusion. But it comforted me to know that someone has struggled with their university experience as much as I have; has struggled for years to make this kind of choice. It wasn’t specifically her decision that comforted me, but the fact that she made a decision and that she stuck to it. And that now she’s on the other side of it all and she’s okay. Jaime’s article made me realize that I’m not alone in this situation and that was invaluable to me.

I still don’t really know what’s going to happen to me and I don’t know what my future is going to look like anymore and I am absolutely terrified about it. So maybe I’m not the best person to be writing this. But I realized that if I’m going through this, and I have a friend going through this, and this writer on Thought Catalog went through it as well, there has to be others out there who feel this conflicted and lost and hopeless too. And so I wanted to write this for all of you. I hope you can read this and feel less alone and I hope you can feel comforted by that.

I haven’t quite resolved my issues with school, but I have decided something: I no longer want “struggling, unhappy student” to be the primary definition of who I am. So I need to begin to insist upon my own happiness and start doing things I love again. Because I really do believe that my fulfillment and passions and mental health are more important than my GPA. I know this doesn’t necessarily take the weight of university and my future and doubt off my shoulders, but it does add a little bit of sunshine to this dark and disheartening path. And that has made an incredible difference. So if you are travelling on the same path, remember these two things: you are never alone on it, and if there’s one thing always worth fighting for, it’s your own happiness.