On New Beginnings

I’m terrible with change.

Sometimes, it’s because I’m afraid to see something end. My freshman year of college, I spent months agonizing over whether I should return to summer camp for my fourth year as a counselor and fourteenth summer in general—though I knew full well that almost all of my friends who had made camp so special wouldn’t be returning—or try something new, like research or a program abroad. I didn’t make the switch over from iTunes to Spotify until literally a month ago because I spent so many years accumulating 300-something songs on iTunes that I couldn’t just scrap all that progress now in favor of a new platform.

More often, though, it’s because I can’t get myself to start something new, no matter how dissatisfied I am with the old thing. In high school, I took the exact same route driving to school every morning for two years, even though it always resulted in lots of traffic, sometimes to the point of making me late. I knew there was a more direct way to get to the students’ parking lot that involved almost no traffic, yet I just couldn’t get myself to take a couple minutes one morning to figure out the three side streets I needed to turn down to avoid the traffic. I sit in the same off-white colored cubicle on the second floor of the Science Center library every time I need to study in the Yard, even though the layout of the room is dreary, the seats are uncomfortable, and it’s always either too cold or too hot, because I can’t get myself to scope out and get used to a new study spot. I’ve been trying to watch The Office on Netflix for months now, but have only gotten through two episodes, because I can’t get myself over the hurdle of getting to know the characters well and getting truly invested in the storyline.

In this latter case, when it’s hard to start new things, I tend to tell myself it’s because the activation energy is too high (can you tell I’m premed?). As if all I need to do is get a lot of sleep and eat a big breakfast, and suddenly I’m ready to try something new because I now have the energy for it. In reality, though, I don’t think it’s an energy barrier that stops me from trying new things; it’s usually an attitude barrier. I fear that the new thing will ultimately turn out to be even worse than the old one. At least I know I’m capable of handling the old thing no matter how dissatisfying it might be—but what if this new thing is too much for me? I worry that once I commit to one way of doing things, I can’t change my mind and try a new way, else I’ll be seen as imperfect by my peers because there must have been something going wrong before in my life to necessitate this change. I avoid that awkward transition period where I’m still not one hundred percent comfortable with, or good at, the new thing out of a fear of being judged. I get in my head and worry about the unknown, when I really just need to embrace it.

Activation energy, in Chemistry, is the energy needed to convert your starting material to the transition state, a weird, energetically unfavorable state where your molecule looks sort of like the reactant and sort of like the product. Without first reaching the transition state, your reactant will never become your desired product.

Starting this blog has been no different an experience than any other new thing I’ve been afraid to try. I actually first got the idea to start a blog during my senior year of high school, when several of my friends had to keep a blog for one of their English classes. Their thoughts and commentaries on life were so interesting to read that it made me want to share my own ideas with the world, too. I had always loved writing, after all. I just needed a consistent platform for doing so. When I first pitched the idea to my brother over a year ago, he was immediately for it; he even offered to get me my own website domain! All I needed to do was find a name for my blog and write the first post.

Yet, it took me over a year of contemplation, casual conversations with friends, desktop sticky notes drafting potential blog post ideas, and procrastination (“I’ll start it when I don’t have a Stat p-set. Or an Anatomy midterm. Or an internship application.”) to actually take my brother up on his offer and start the damn thing! I worried people wouldn’t like my writing style. I feared no one would ever read it (because God forbid I do something just for my own personal happiness without getting others’ stamp of approval on it). I even questioned my own ability to commit to a long-term project like this without getting bored or forgetting to write after a while. But now I’m finally writing my first blog post and it feels great to start something new. I have to set all my trepidation aside—get over my attitude barrier—or else I’ll never know just what I might be missing by not starting this blog.

A lot of things have changed already just in the past couple of weeks: I turned 21 in mid-September, marking a new stage of adulthood and the opportunity to get a fancy horizontal driver’s license. Harvard inaugurated a new President on Friday. I was actually on time to my 9 AM lecture this week. And a lot of things will continue to change: midterm elections are coming up, as is the first ever Harvard-Yale football game at Fenway Park. “The only constant in life is change.” This blog will be yet another example of that.

With this blog as a starting point, I’m going to try to make a concerted effort this year to get over the attitude barrier that prevents me from starting new things and makes me fear changes I can’t control. As a result, maybe I’ll even stop being afraid of ending old things, since the end of one thing means the eventual start of another. I’m going to remind myself to have more moments of doing, in place of moments of overthinking and psyching myself out. And when a change leads to something worse, I’m going to take solace in the fact that at least it was a learning opportunity.

I’m terrible with change—but I’m going to change that.