I Am Still Learning

"I am still learning"

I’ve never been truly artistic, (although I did want to be an artist for a brief time in my life; I even made art shows in my room in which I invited my parents to) but occasionally I’ll break out the scissors and some old magazines and go to town. I’ve always been a bit of a “hoarder,” a trait I like to blame on my dad, so I don’t have to go very far to dig up some old clippings of newspapers I’ve shoved in various drawers in my room.

I like to hold on to memories; I like to remember the moments in which I believed something in my life had changed. Historians call these moments “turning points,” like the Battle of Saratoga in the American Revolution (shout-out to my US History teacher Mr. Michael Horne this year!). I like to refer to them as “excursions,” a word that I was reminded existed today during American Literature class, which gets me back to the point that I’ve been trying to make.

The quote “I am still learning,” is one I found during a particularly difficult time during my sophomore. For some reason, I thought I had to have everything figured out, probably a byproduct of being a 16-year-old girl. I realized that I had to stop categorizing everything as a good moment and a bad moment, really, they were just “excursions” in my life that will lead me somewhere, anywhere, I don’t really know where, but I like to have faith that it will lead me somewhere good.

Notes from class

I am still learning, every day in fact, which is a good job on the part of my school. I am still learning how to be happy, how to be sad and how to do some good in this crazy world. As I go through my excursions, I try to make the best out of them by just thinking, “This will make a good story one day.” I will finish this rant with a quote I read recently that said, “You have to be the kind of person who can make the best out of a Tuesday. You know those people who live for the weekends? They’re wishing their life away. You have to find something worth living for or else you’ll look back and realize you’ve wasted your life away” (Mr. Drew Marvin, English Teacher).

This week, and for the rest of this year, I have made it my goal to “make the best out of Tuesdays.” Moreover, I have promised myself to continue to learn, to grow, and to laugh, even when classes get boring, life gets hard, and I get angry, because I know everything will make a good story one day. 

In honor of “learning something new every day,” here is a list of some random facts I have compiled recently: 

1. From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”: “Truth often finds its way to the mind close-muffled in robes of sleep.” 
2. From Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden Pond”: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” 
3. Alexander Hamilton was actually against duels. Andrew Jackson was known for dueling.
4. L’âme sœur means “soulmate” in French. 
5. eorge Washington started the tradition of a two-term presidency. It wasn’t until after FDR that a legal limit was set.