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A Year Full of Ups & Downs
This year has been full of ups, down, twists and turns. When I say this, I speak on behalf of the entire world. It’s been a journey where I’ve learned a lot about myself as I’m adapting to what is now considered to the new normal.
Throughout the year of 2021, I learnt many important life lessons, started and closed chapters, built meaningful relationships and more importantly, I was able to grow on a personal level. Despite this year being everything but normal, in a weird way, I’m really grateful for everything’s that happened this year.
Important Life Lessons ✍️
Despite this year being a bit of a rollercoaster, it took me a while to overcome the long-lasting effects of the pandemic. This year was full of many new experiences and challenges, but as I was adjusting to this change, I learned many valuable life lessons.
Life is going to suck sometimes
In November of 2020, I started as a screener at the Brampton Civic Hospital. I was responsible for coordinating messages between visitors and the different departments within the hospital. Every single day, patients and visitors would come in and hearing about their struggles and what their family members are going through was really heartbreaking.
Seeing how someone’s loved one was in critical condition, or how a child was unable to see their parents shortly after their birth, were both extremely sad experiences. Change has been at the forefront of this last two years, including for hospitals. I want to be kind to visitors, but I feel cruel when I have to tell them that they cannot visit their family because of covid protocols. Unfortunately, our world has come to terms with that harsh reality.
I would often come home after my shifts and reflect on what it would be like to be in their shoes. This moment of reflection ignited other thoughts and I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for them to be going through such a challenging time, especially at such a difficult moment. I hear this saying all the time
We often don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone
Appreciation and gratitude are mindsets that are really hard to implement into your life and after hearing about these stories first hand, I made it my goal to make the most of life in the moment. Life can change in an instant.
This life lesson was honestly a reflection of how the last 2 years have went. Each year, new challenges were thrown at us, new obstacles, new lifestyles and the scariest part of it all: nothing is guaranteed. Having reflected and pondered about this for a while, I tried to make positive changes in my life.
I stopped procrastinating. I started to do things as soon as possible. Life is difficult, it’s complex and it’s hard to understand what the future might hold for us. Through this experience, I learnt one of the most important lessons at a young age.
Environment is 🔑
Over the course of this year, my environment has been constantly changing. I’ve been surrounded by different individuals with different life goals. As my environment changed, it started shaping who I was in different ways.
In the beginning of this year, I was in the IB program, I was in a very competitive environment where everyone wanted to do great things, but there was a greater emphasis on academics. This was beneficial in the sense that it motivated me to do better in terms of school work, but it was really restricting.
Around April, I made the executive decision to drop the IB program, this was a really difficult decision to make (more on this later). I went to my home school and I also joined The Knowledge Society (TKS). I was in 2 different environments at the same time and it had different impacts on my motivation levels.
Being surrounded by ambitious individuals at TKS pushed me to be the best version of myself, I had drive to accomplish things and genuinely leave a positive impact on the world. I was motivated to create content, learn new topics and build meaningful relationships.
But, when I was in school, I was no longer surrounded by the same ambitious individuals and it took a bit of a toll on me. I was burnt out from school work and my motivation levels were dropping. I dreaded the going to school. I wasn’t really working on anything interesting when I was at school and I wasn’t really learning about anything that interested me either.
It took me a while to realize the impacts it was having on me. During the end of November, I was really becoming frustrated because I had no drive to finish my work and this was when I understood the true importance of having an environment where people are pushing you forward.
Over the winter break, I’ve spent lots of time around these people and they’ve kept me going. This has honestly been a really important lesson for me to learn this year, I would usually spend lots of time forcing myself to work. But now, I’m able to optimize for productivity by being in an ambitious environment.
I’ve stopped forcing things, it’s made me a lot more productive.
This wasn’t only something that’s going to be vital for me now, but in the future too. Right now, I’m given a bit of leeway, I’ve been able to get away with having periods of low motivation. But in the future, that might not always be the case. Being able to learn this lesson this year has been really important and I’m going to actively work on throughout 2022.
Pace yourself + don’t overcommit
Towards the end of this year, I found myself feeling a bit overwhelmed because I had taken on a lot at the same time. I was working on the MIT Youth Innovation Challenge while also trying to balance a bunch of other stuff I had going on in my life (TKS, School, Uni apps, etc.).
During the month of December, I found it really difficult balancing everything. I wasn’t dreading everyday per say, but it got to a point where I was losing track of when I last took a break. I spent most of my day in my room and this lead to extended periods of burnout.
I realized that I can’t always do it all. I wanted to maximize my growth and work on many new things, but overcommitting isn’t the way to do that. I had the urge to do as many things as I could, but now that I sit down reflecting on it.
I learned that pacing yourself is key.
It’s a common trend within young people, we have drive and want to do as many things as possible. But sometimes, I just need to sit down and slow down a bit. Being in my senior year, there were a lot of crunch time decisions that I had to make and that provoked me to rush into things.
I realized that I was missing out on the living aspect of life, what I was doing was a one way road to burnout. I learned that it’s vital to pace yourself and not overcommit.
Do things that are worth your time and add value.
Now that it’s the new year, I’m contemplating on dropping some things to better balance my life. There’s a lot of struggle, but now that I’ve come to this realization, I’m able to better pace myself.
Embrace your individuality
During the beginning of this year, I was facing a bit of a dilemma. I was in the IB program at the time and I didn’t know if it was worth it to continue the program. I talked to my friends about it and they would try to convince me to stay. There were a lot of factors to consider, I was going to do TKS in September as well so I was unsure how possible it would be to balance the 2.
After months of jumping back and forth between decisions, I made the decision to drop the program in April. It would mean leaving the people I’ve known for the last 3+ years behind and being surrounded by completely new people in September. It was a difficult decision to make, but during this decision making process, I kept on comparing myself to IB alumni and the benefits they were able to receive.
My friends, parents and IB alumni gave me a bunch of factors to consider and they all suggested different things. Now that I reflect on it, I wanted to finish the IB program because that’s just the path that most people take. But, during this process, I was finally able to break away from that and embrace the future that I want for myself.
It was then that I realized I needed to take my own path and do what was in my best interests.
All humans are different; we live different lives and experience different things. While I had external influences, it was time for me to make my own mark on things.
If this decision was a mistake, it would be my responsibility. Having heard from perspectives does not mean that I have to lean towards a certain decision.
Honestly, that decision I made in April is probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I feel like I’m in a place where everything that I’ve achieved is purely from my independence and not because I decided to follow the norm. Of course not all days are the greatest, but now that I’m here, I feel like I’m doing my best to make a difference. It’s really comforting knowing that I’m on a path that I feel is right.
You’ll never be perfect.
This entire year provided many reality checks for me and one of the biggest ones came during the end of the year. I have a bad habit of trying to make sure everything is absolutely perfect. This has been the case for most of my life, I would often chase perfection and feel incomplete when I couldn’t acheive it.
As I was writing my University of Toronto supplementary application, I kept on going back and rewriting it. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with myself, I wanted the application to be perfect. In fact, the week it was due, I rewrote the application 3 times.
After submitting my application, I didn’t feel that it was perfect. It took away from the pride that I should’ve felt in having gotten it done. I just felt incomplete and having reflected on it, I learnt this lesson the hard way.
I realized that I’ll never be perfect, regardless of how hard I try. This applies to myself and the work that I do. Perfect doesn’t really exist and when I tried to chase perfection, I found myself not getting things done and I wasn’t maximizing my growth.
This instance with my application, somedays I would take a “break” from working on it, but I was just putting it off because I knew it wouldn’t be perfect. By doing this, I was hindering my growth and even when I would complete a task, I wouldn’t be happy or proud.
Along with all that, I would overthink the final product a lot. It was one of the reasons why I decided to restart my application. I was in this constant cycle of thinking that it wasn’t good enough to get me into the university. But reflecting on it now, it’s more important to honestly just get things done to a high degree and move on.
I realized that I wasn’t spending my time wisely either, I would spend hours trying to perfect something instead of trying to start a new project. Having come to this realization, I’ve started to spend time on taking action on things that I can get going for me now.
By doing all this, I’ll be able to learn and gain feedback. Instead of limiting my growth, it would be an opportunity to improve and become better. This was a mindset I learnt this year at TKS as well.
Done > Perfect
Learning that I’m never going to be perfect is probably one of the most valuable things I learnt this year. Now that I have one of the busiest months coming up, I’m going to try my best to implement this thinking into everything that I do.
Takeaways from 2021
Despite this year being a bit of rollercoaster, I’m really grateful for this entire year. Personally, I’ve overcome some of the most difficult hurdles that have been in my way for quite some time. There was a lot of change, but the life lessons that I was able to learn really helped me grow as an individual. I’m not huge on New Years Resolutions, but one thing that I do want to learn this year is adapting to change. This next year is going to mark the start of university and I want to be able to adapt to changes. In the past, it’s been a bit difficult to change environments and get used to it all so that’s something that I’m actively going to work on.
I’m extremely excited to see what this new year holds for me and for the world. Thank you for reading my journey in 2021, see you soon :)
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