It's really interesting how you can be told something over and over and not truly understand until you experience it yourself. I call these "Your Mom Was Right" moments. You know, like when your mom tells you that if you don't wear a coat you're going to regret it and you're like "yeah whatever, mom," and then an hour later when you're freezing your butt off you think to yourself "alright fine, mom was right." Moments like these typically come when someone tries to tell you what will happen in your future, such as "you won't miss some of the people you were friends with in high school" or "when you find the right college/spouse/car/whatever, you'll know." You brush it off, not because you don't believe it, but the full truth hasn't impressed itself upon you yet.
My most recent dealing with something like this involves the sentence, which I'm sure you've all probably heard before, "College goes by fast." It's one of these same sentences where you roll your eyes and say "sure, mom" only to realize in hindsight that she was speaking a far greater truth than you ever could have known at the time. This summer, I've definitely had a Your Mom Was Right moment. I got home in May and I thought, where did the first two years of college go? They certainly went faster than the first two years of high school, let me tell you. So all summer it's kept hitting me that I only have two more years left at Asbury.
And honestly, I'm pretty glad that hit me now and not a week after I graduate. I want to cherish my time at Asbury, even if it means trying a little harder not to just wish away the weeks until this event or that. I want to be present even in the moments where I'm at work or I'm studying for a really hard test or I'm so tired I feel like I could fall asleep standing up. I don't want to get to the end of the next two years and think, "where did the past four years go?" (though I may not completely be in control of that and it will probably still happen anyway)
That's kind of my goal for this school year, I guess; to pay a little bit more attention. Live a little bit more in the present. Be alert to what's going on around me and cherish the time I have left to be a college student, because there's not many other places in the world where you can get away with having large-scale nerf gun fights or napping in random places without (much) judgement.
Feel free to remind me of this sometime around midterms.
-Lisa
