End of year Goals

By Emily Grace Seow

  The school year is coming to a close and I wonder if I’m ready for it to end? I have always said that I was almost done–long before I was even close–and I’m getting kind of sick of it. However, this time it’s for real. I am writing this article with a major time restraint, due to the fact I have procrastinated writing until the very day I had to send it in. As a result, I think there is no better topic to discuss.

   About two months ago I was supposed to have finished my school work, yet I found I was nowhere as close as I thought I was. I have this horrible streak of starting things and then dropping them without completing them or just plain stopping. Sometimes I had an excuse to do so, but most of the time I simply stopped. I know myself well enough to know that when I have free time I would probably end up sitting around watching Youtube and stuffing my face. This motivated me to start writing a list. The point of the list was to make sure I was not idle after school was over and to ensure that I had something to look forward to. I want to accomplish so much this year and I have this sinking feeling that I have wasted so much of it. Soon, I realized there was some pretty outrageous stuff on the list that I had no way to finish before the start of the next school year, but I still wanted to keep track of what I wanted to accomplish. Despite the excitement of the prospect of all these fun things, I have mixed feelings about the school year ending. 

  I find myself constantly putting off my list, saying that I’ll do it when school ends. School is constant; it is repetitive, sure, but it does not change. I know exactly what to expect in school. In every other area of my life, I am all but lost or wandering. The future is so uncertain it makes me shiver with fear. Stepping outside of my comfort zone has never been my strong suit, I prefer to keep my feet on solid ground; yet almost all the things on my list are things that will push me further than I’ve ever been. 

One of them is to climb a mountain. Instantly my first thought is: “How on earth am I going to do that?”

   There are no mountains in Singapore, and I have no money. This thought brought back a memory from long ago. I used to be afraid of heights. I remember being on the edge of some tall place and being frozen still, but one day I looked down from that high place and I wasn’t afraid anymore. People say that you aren’t afraid of heights but have a fear of falling, and once I learned to trust the people around me not to let me fall I stopped being afraid. There’s this analogy about an elephant that a group of blind men surrounds, each touching a different part of the elephant. They decide what is the absolute truth from what they feel. Each person is not wrong about the elephant, but they don’t see the full picture, in the end, they all decide they are right. Since there is no one to challenge that belief, they may be wrong yet never know it. 

   I realised the list challenged me. I want to be challenged; I want to be pushed outside of my absolute truth, and discover a whole new perspective along the way. My family encourages me in each venture and my parents give great advice, but I am slowly learning to motivate myself. I don’t always want to go out and do things, I often dread leaving the house, but I know it can be really rewarding when you reach that mountain peak. With every doubt laid out there in front of me, the only thing holding me back is myself. So one of these days I’m going to climb to the top of a mountain and I’m going to scream or hoot for no reason at all. After all, why not?