The last autumn

It was my freshman year at Duke when I first became aware of an incredible phenomenon: seasons. I came to campus primarily accustomed to two types of climate conditions—weather that was hot and sunny and weather that required a sweater. Anything below 60 degrees was considered too cold, and I can’t recall ever seeing a tree in my city change colors. It was the perks of being born and raised in Los Angeles.

So it was to my amazement that first year when, come October, I could feel the shift in temperature, see the changing leaves and get excited for my eventual first encounter with snow. As a freshman, everything was so new and consequently met with awe and unwavering enthusiasm.

Three years later and I am now in the midst of my fourth and potentially last fall season (I am fairly confident San Francisco does not have real seasons either). But this autumn struck a different tone, and it was not until this past weekend that I understood why. My parents were visiting, and as we were driving around Durham, my mom remarked how beautiful it was this time of the year. She said it with the same tone of wonder I usually have, yet when I looked up from my phone to respond to her, I realized that I hadn’t even noticed. Or if I had noticed, I certainly had not taken the time to appreciate it.

It may sound silly, but autumn is my favorite part about living in North Carolina, and yet it had become yet another thing I put off enjoying indefinitely. I was too busy, too stressed, too focused on seemingly pressing senior year tasks to stop for a moment and simply enjoy my surroundings. And that has been a common theme for the first half of the semester.

I have never been fond of wishing time away. But I have heard it often from my peers—“Ugh, I can't wait for it to be the weekend,” “I just need to make it to fall break,” “I really just want it to be the end of the semester.” We spend so much time rationalizing in our minds that everything will be better once “X” amount of time passes but then those time markers come and go and we are just as overwhelmed as we’ve always been.

I have spent much of this semester negotiating and renegotiating with myself on how I spend my time. After this exam, once I’m done with that interview, after I have a better grasp on this week’s schedule. That is when I can pay attention to what I want to prioritize—spending meaningful time with friends, developing my passions, taking care of myself.

And while I was so busy being busy, I found myself reiterating the same tired phrases I used to criticize—“Let’s get lunch sometime!” “I can’t hang out now but probably after my exam. Not this week, but definitely next week.” The amount of times I have said some form of these this past semester is both frustrating and disappointing. As someone who values relationships so highly, I have felt like a bad friend more times than I would like to admit, unintentionally absent though still absent nonetheless.

We are all so busy—though probably not as busy as we think—and at some point we have to let something fall to the wayside. As seniors, most of us also feel this intense pressure to not just live up to academic and social expectations but now professional ones as well. We are no longer just trying to navigate a summer internship but instead what feels like a determinant of our entire lives. And in a setting where it feels like everyone is competing for a limited number of jobs in consulting, banking or large tech firms, feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt and existential questioning that are already prominent on campus become even more intense. That is not to say our concerns are unfounded or we should not strive for greatness in our professional and academic spheres. But why is it that, when work piles up and stress rises, the first obligation we let go of is our obligation to ourselves?

There is no shortage of news articles, blog posts and even columns just like this one lambasting the culture of busyness and preoccupation with appearing to have it all together while forging personal wellbeing. They are topics that are addressed time and time again. But as a senior, it is has hit me that my time here is limited, and that if I keep pushing things off or asking to postpone, I really will be out of time. I fear reaching the end of senior year and feeling that I wasted the time I was given—that I got a job but didn’t show enough compassion, that I excelled in my classes but not in my relationships, that I did everything I was supposed to do but not what I wanted to do. So as autumn transitions to winter, I am trying to be more mindful with my actions and deliberate in how I spend time with others and myself. That can be challenging on a campus like this, but I genuinely believe it is possible. And as a senior, as terrifying as it is, I only have a semester and a half left to try.