Welcome to the Real-Life

Because of social and traditional media, I feel as if we have a meticulously created image of what we expect the next chapter of our lives to hold. However, the part that hurts the most is when these plans derail from the ideal, and the sinking feeling of failure settles in. For me, this image consisted of making friends quickly, going out to Boston on the weekends, bouncing around between MIT frat parties, and being the best possible version of myself (which was the complete opposite of who I am, but who I exactly wanted to be). Don't get me wrong, sometimes I wish I was like the girls in these photos and at night, I would pray that something would shift in my soul that made me 'normal'. Something that would make me more like what I perceived was everyone else. If I were to be completely honest with all of you, I would say that the feelings ate me alive during those long nights. I was slightly depressed, and I had never experienced depression before in my life. To top that all off, I had no idea how to deal with the lingering dark cloud that hung over my head. I felt as if I had failed my first year of college before I even got a real start with it. 

Let’s be real with each other. Your first year of college does not signify anything about what the rest of your college experience will look like. It is just disappointing to find out that people don’t talk about how isolating the entire process of moving into a dorm can be. As someone who moved away from my familiar bubble of Houston to the cold and depressing atmosphere of the Northeast, it was an extreme change that I (looking back) wasn't as well prepared for as I thought initially. 

Before I graduated high school in the spring of last year, I always understood two vital things about my college application and decision: 

1. You have fee waivers, so apply to any and every school you want to

2. College is a financial decision, so go to the school that is the least financial burden

My mom initially thought that the cheapest school for me would be Hampton University in Virginia, but she would sometimes backtrack on her own words and talk about asking one of my community scholarship sponsors to shell out the $50,000 a year to go to Spelman College. These thoughts did somewhat place a damper on what I wanted to do with my college experience as I was scared of the idea of going to a historically black college as a black girl who never fit in with groups of other black students, but I was also afraid of the racial dynamics that would appear at a predominantly white institution. I do not regret going to Wellesley, I can say that as I am writing this nearing the end of my first year in April, I am happy with my decision but there were moments when I did question it. 

Now… to answer the question of what I am going to do with this site and why am I explaining all of this exposition for you? I want to share more about my life as it goes. I have not been able to keep a consistent posting schedule since the pandemic, mainly because my high school life was extremely chaotic, but I hope that I will be able to get back into the swing of things now as a college student with enough time to do this thing again. So what I want to do from now into the end of the summer is to recap some of the things that I experienced as a first-year student at Wellesley, then move on from there in real time as things happen. I have a running list of some fun things that I learned about and experienced that I am excited to write about. There will be some friendship breakups, online dating things, roommate issues, chronic loneliness of the first year, and giving people a less filtered version of life in college and the Wellesley experience. I do want to keep my book reviews and maybe some music-related stuff, but I want to get a little more personal with my life as I get older and hopefully wiser.

I hope that this new start will be more in line with my life now, which will make me more motivated to write weekly. This will not be the final form of anything here because I am constantly evolving and changing, so this blog will constantly be evolving and changing. But I am hopeful for this new change as it is more me now versus how I was when I was in middle school (It's crazy to think that I started this in middle school. God, I’m old as hell.) Well, that’s it, folks!

Signing off,

Kris