I think it would be a little out of character for me if I wasn’t totally upfront with the fellow seniors reading my blog. 

 

I could NOT tell you a single academic thing I learned this semester. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but let’s face it: there’s not a lot that I remember beyond the realms of crying, sleeping (or lack thereof), and the fever dreams of college apps.

 

In the final arc of Zea Karmadi’s narrative journey through high school, the soundtrack would consist of very specific TikTok audios playing through my head on a loop, the audio of AP Stats and AP Chemistry YouTube videos at 1.5x speed, and the inner monologue of my three A.M. existential crisis… es. Crisi? Crisis’s? As was stated in the unofficial final blog post I posted (click here for an in-depth look at out-of-context screenshots summarizing the first half of my senior year!), my mental breakdown episodes consist of 22 stages and a mini hibernation period followed shortly by the urge to Internalize Everything. 

 

But I digress. 

 

All jokes aside – all sarcasm and sardonic wit taken off the table for the time being – this first semester has been better than I expected. 

 

Going into the pandemic, I gotta confess that being quarantined at home for over a year wasn’t entirely terrible. With close friends that I’ve made throughout my childhood halfway across the world, four hours away, half an hour away, and out on the West Coast, keeping in touch without physically meeting up and laughing over video calls is an age-old rodeo. Honestly, I kind of peaked a little bit during that time (grades-wise for sure, at least). 

 

I really thought that this semester would be the one where I’d crash and burn, and yet that hasn’t entirely happened yet. Let’s delve into how I ultimately subverted my own expectations for myself: 

• I learned to use Snapchat. God, that makes me sound ANCIENT. Look, in my defense, I’ve had it for about five years and I just never used it at all. Now I’m consistently using it to send video messages on the fly to friends I haven’t talked to in ages, and I’ve found myself expressing my love very often by making half a heart with my fingers. It feels like a small thing, but I’ve found that it speaks volumes to people whose time zones only align with me for about an hour a day. 
• I figured out eyeliner! I swear, I promise this is related to the point of this post. It’s not just about eyeliner, but managing that and making it something that’s become characteristic of me? It’s boosted my confidence so much, and it’s bled into other aspects of myself that I’ve put my personality into – my clothes, jewelry, etc. I’ve gotten a way better grasp on my person than I did at the start of the year, and yes, I have adjusted to cry at variously odd angles so that the aforementioned eyeliner doesn’t streak. 
• I finally watched Hocus Pocus for the first time. This occurred in the basement of one Hannah Mitchinson the night before Early Action college applications were due. So between discovering the fantabulous natures of the three witches, the core four protagonists, and a Halloween classic that will forever be a core memory for me, I found myself working through essays that I genuinely didn’t think I’d be able to finish in time. It’s little moments like that, I think, that really make up the best aspects of my senior year – the stress broken up by bouts of laughter at the movie playing, glancing between a computer screen and a television. 
• I crocheted! A lot. Alarmingly, a lot. I’ve created bags, gloves, and hats for friends (amongst other things) and I’ve come to discover that hey, I like making things for people and giving those gifts to them. There’s a love language I didn’t realize I had, but it wasn’t always crocheting – it used to be handmade cards and birthday gifts for my parents, crouched on the floor of my bedroom and ready to shove them under my bed at any given moment so that they wouldn’t see. 
• I let a little bit of color into my life. Figuratively, and literally, as I allowed myself to experiment with fun and funky sweaters that I normally wouldn’t wear (someday I’ll update this post with photos of them). There was that whole branching out of my comfort zone thing and the realization that hey, trying out some things that I normally wouldn’t actually brought me some real joy.

 

Senior year (so far) is an intricacy of little moments that come together to become one overarching pretty great semester. It’s been a time of experimentation while simultaneously solidifying aspects of yourself that are entirely yours. It’s making playlists with people you thought would only be acquaintances, it’s staying up until three A.M. in a silence that’s only broken by questions that may or may not be deeply personal. It’s sleeping on the wrong side of the bed because you need to charge your computer and submit that last college application that you decided to do solely because why not? It’s walking to a bakery through sun and snow and bringing back salted chocolate chip cookies to split with your friends. It’s also a little bit of realizing the process of applying to colleges can be kind of a scam at times, and you can honestly do no wrong. 

Honestly, senior year? It’s a lot of thinking that it’ll go one way and realizing that it’s going to go in every direction but the one that you were anticipating. It’s not so bad.

 

As a final roundup for this post, here’s a couple of out-of-context, semi-chaotic photos that really sum up the entirety of my semester. Some taken in school, some taken out of school, all capturing the raw joy and sheer energy of living-in-the-moment the senior year should really bring out in us.