Senior Year Dispatch

An entry from my (physical) journal from the first day of senior year at UF - 8/23/21, transcribed to my computer on 12/23/21.

First day of my senior year of college at UF. I’ve changed but I’m still me - how ship of theseus of me. Yet here I am listening to Lana Del Rey and writing in my journal like I’ve been doing since middle school. I’m so much more confident and capable of existing than when I was a little freshman. I experience this cycle in every phase of my life. When I am the new, young, unknowing one in any situation I am timid and meek and quiet and observing in silence. As I make my way up in age, rank, knowledge, and life experiences I grow more daring, more self-assured, more experimental, and more unforgiving. Is this me “coming back” to my “true” self? Or are both equally me and just how I am given different situations?

I am okay with being different from the majority of people at this school. Mostly still because I find people with common interests as me on the internet. In middle school it was Tumblr but now it’s mainly Twitter and my little food instagram. I can be someone who doesn’t fit one archetype or is defined by one thing they like or the one thing they call work. I’ve always looked (when I was younger, maybe until sophomore year of college) at people’s jobs as the most telling and interesting thing about someone, but that can hardly be true in a society where people are just trying to make the best for themselves out of what cards they are handed (or how we handle this silly little life.)

I am currently reading Pride and Prejudice, finally! I’ve never read Jane Austen before and I am already hooked on the slow burn enemies to lovers of it all. Also cannot wait to watch the movie with Kiera Knightley.

Truthfully I don't think I will ever tire or outgrow Lana del Rey’s music. In me will always remain the little misunderstood teenage girl who would dramatize everything - because everything is dramatic to a teenage girl! “Godhood is just like girlhood: a begging to be believed”. Women are always begging to be believed - or understood, or loved, or cared for. Maybe we all don’t actually know what we want. Maybe we’re all wanting everything until we find what fits right in this gaping hole of desire inside of us. Maybe nothing material or physical can fill it, maybe it’s something inside of us that just needs to be found, nurtured, and thus transformed. Is this why people become religious? But to me that is different because you must look towards someone’s “path” and follow their advice. I’ve always been bad at that. I think I could find myself following the religion of writers - Kurt Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Emily Bronte - they are people I could follow and devote myself to. They’re human, fallible, perverse (as all writers are) and admit their lack of knowledge. Socrates, after all, only knew that he knew nothing. What an honorable thing to admit - how brave, who could do that now? Everyone is so obsessed with being right all the time and the most knowledgeable. Am I a fool to admit when I don’t know enough on a subject to argue a meaningful opinion on the topic? I think the Youtuber Contrapoints (name name) is one of my favorites. I could listen to her analyze major concepts and bring up the most perfect academic and pop culture references in a way I’ve never seen anyone do before (or do well, at least). It’s as knowledgeable yet humble (well…at least acknowledging of faults) a person can get these days and it’s how I wish I was. Able to go between highbrow and lowbrow knowledge and therefore connect and relate to everyone and then learn from them.

Real learning happens from reading, because most people don’t know what they’re talking about - but does that mean it’s unnecessary to listen to them or even dangerous because you can learn incorrect information or be convinced of a “poor” opinion? Or, should you hear these things anyways and learn to use your critical thinking to decide what is wrong/right/good/bad? Is it a case by case basis? See, this is why scientific articles make sense to me. But I also know it’s almost impossible to boil down the human experience (and its turmoil) to scientific experiments and papers. This is why I, and everyone, need to read philosophy more often and especially have discussions about it in school. That’s where the real secrets of the human condition and understanding exist. And in books like The Decameron.