It’s week six already. Wow, I feel like school just started last week.
Just not too long ago I declared Linguistics as my major – and in such a flurry too. I had been putting off making my decision for so long, pushing it out of my head so I wouldn’t need to think about it, that by the time came where I actually had to submit my decision I still hadn’t decided. I just went along with it, and here I am having three core linguistic modules this semester.
I was a little excited for school, to finally be able to tell people “I’m majoring in Linguistics” instead of the answer “I haven’t decided” that I had been giving people all last year. Saying I didn’t know made me feel small – everyone had decided what direction they wanted their life to take and I was still as muddled as ever. Wasn’t university the time when I figured my life out?
I sit in lectures and seminars and listen to the lecturer speak endlessly. One lecturer says “I expect you guys are all here because of your passion in analyzing language!” For some reason this statement makes me feel uneasy. Do I have a passion for analyzing language? Um, no. No, I don’t. The phrase “analyzing language” itself sounds so dry and boring to me.
But this makes me feel like an impostor – around me are all these people who are in such awe of language, waiting and wanting to know more about me. I’m just sitting at the corner of the lecture theater wondering why the heck someone would swallow a string of beads and extract all his teeth so that his vocal movement could be seen in an x-ray (its a long story).
Its a frustrating feeling. To want to want to learn, to want to have the thrill of knowing new things and exploring new boundaries and having the mastery of the knowledge. But instead everyday I drag myself to my books (sometimes rather unsuccessfully) and force myself to read words I don’t understand and memorize things I don’t care about.
I thought university for sure was going to be when everything started falling into place. Where I finally found what interest me, where life suddenly had so much meaning. I pictured studying something that would intrigue me so much that it wouldn’t even feel like studying, that I’d look down at my work and be so engrossed in it I wouldn’t even feel the length of time.
Think about a jungle – where the trees grow thickly and there are branches anywhere; you can’t see much in front of you. The weather is humid and hot and you just cannot find you way out and you are miserable. I thought university was when I’d come out of the jungle. I’d see a big city up ahead, where I know when I reach, wew, it’ll just be great. It’s far ahead, really far, but I can clearly see the path there, and it is through a meadow with flowers and the weather is nice and fair and it’s a nice journey.
But instead I’m still in the jungle; the trees are thicker and the weather is hotter. And this time it’s worse. Because before when I was in the jungle I knew that in due time I’d leave it for the beautiful meadow, but now when I’m still pushing away leaves and trudging miserably, I’m not so sure if the meadow exists anymore.
Sounds like a rather stupid imagery, and I’m no poet, but that’s the way I can best describe it.
It is difficult to find where all these end, where life starts. Or maybe it’s started already, but I can’t stand the thought of that. That this is where my life begins, how it’s going to continue. That is just a hopeless thought. And there are times when I feel hopeless and defeated and ready to crawl under my blanket and never come out again.
And yet in all these, let me put my fears and doubts and hopelessness at the foot of the cross, and that if I have nothing else, let my confidence in Him be enough.
God is faithful, this much I know.
PIZZAPENGUINSLIFE 