College Life: First Semester

I am a person of fair hesitation. I can be indecisive. I exercise great caution. My past defined me as a person of strength, intelligence, and preparation. I was, or maybe I still am, competitive, ambitious, and energetic. Even in rougher times, I held fast to my character, I had my eyes and my ambition glued to my future plans and education; steadfast, scholarship-seeking soldier. Finishing high school was emotionally challenging and frustrating for me, but I glided through it anyway, heading straight towards the giant pool that represents college life, and right into the deep-end that is Honor’s Science.

Now, it is important to note that last summer, I believe I learned how to live. Like really live, not just breathe, not just sleep, not just survive. I think I may have actually been okay. My twin sister, one of my best friends, and I packed up my father’s 1998 Honda Civic with more than enough shorts and t-shirts to get us through a nine-day road-trip across many parts of Eastern Canada. In that short amount of time, the three of us jumped off a bridge into an ocean full of jellyfish, sprang off a seven meter cliff into a waterfall, got lost in a blueberry field in the middle of the night and grew closer with every passing minute. Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and PEI; nine days, eight nights, three girls and 600$. I recognize the sad fact that our road-trip may have been the first time that I truly realized that there is more to life than school. Ever since the day we returned home, I haven’t been able to get that vacation out of my head. It was an amazing experience to mark the end of high school, and an even better one to kick off the rest of our lives, our begging in a world of less restrictions, of more liberty; college.

After working the rest of the summer as a lifeguard, I took the plunge into the figurative swimming pool of Vanier College. At first, I thought that things would run just as smoothly for me as they usually did. I expected to gently dip my toe into the warm, clear water and to immerse myself gracefully into a whole new world. Looking back now, I feel it would be more accurate to say that I had been about to hurl myself clumsily off the high-board, straight into the stormy waters of my first semester.

-Katherine Willcocks