Onwards & Upwards & Then What
November 20, 2022
Writer: Hannah Ahdab
Editor: Alex Vena
As I sit in class scrolling through my inbox, an email catches my eye. Right in between an internship application confirmation email and a Canvas notification sits a Google Calendar invitation. The invitation, in all caps, is telling me that my friends are requesting my presence this Thursday evening. This is who I have become. Somewhere in the midst of midterms, recruiting, and extracurriculars I became the person that needed a Google Calendar invite to be reminded to socialize.
I thought back to a conversation I had earlier that week with my friend who told me that she felt like college was her time to rediscover what made her inner child happy. It was the middle of the day on a Tuesday and she was on her way to play pickup basketball. Not because she wanted to get better, or had scheduled a workout into her day, but because it was something that genuinely made her happy. So, she found a way to fit it into her schedule. While I was happy for her, I realized that my inner child was jumping for joy about my overly packed schedule and the chaos of trying to enter the riveting field of management consulting.
I spent all four years of my high school education with tunnel vision toward college. My parents, teachers, and friends all reinforced the idea that I had to work hard now so that I could get into a good university, and then I could enjoy the so-called ‘four best years of my life.’ But now I’m here, at the university that I spent countless days and nights grinding to get into, and I feel like I spend most of my days on autopilot. Class. Work. Bed. Repeat.
As students at Michigan, we get so focused on the idea that we are ‘the leaders and best,’ so we are always striving for that next accomplishment. However, if you’re always looking towards the future, you forget to live in the present. The present, which is beautiful and filled with friends who are rediscovering what makes their inner child happy.
Ambition is a great quality to have. It’s how I ended up at Michigan and how I decided what career path I wanted to pursue, but it can also be the killer of happiness. Ambition tells us to work hard and strive to accomplish something, but it doesn’t remind us to be appreciative of the things that we have already accomplished. If you’re always looking forward to the next thing you’ll accomplish, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s right in front of you. I have to remind myself that there is no way to be the best at everything, that it’s okay to measure my day’s productivity in the number of friends I’ve caught up with and moments that made me realize that I am truly happy - instead of how many chapters I read or problems I completed in my problem set.
While there is no way to quantify if these are actually “the greatest four years of my life,” they are only four years, and time passes incredibly fast. As a junior planning to go abroad in the spring, I only have two full semesters left here in Ann Arbor. Obviously, I can’t avoid all my responsibilities and spend my days making my inner child happy, but I’ve started finding little ways everyday, like saying yes to impromptu movie nights with my roommates or making time to go on walks in the last few days of warmth in Ann Arbor. I want to spend the rest of my time here finding the things that make my inner child happy with the people who magically ended up in my life by sheer circumstance.
Image: Lynn Sabieddine
