2011

My annual new year posts, in the past, had always been anticipations of the following year, of high expectations and goals to be met with a fierce determination and unwavering focus. Every year, I knew what my next steps would be: proving my own worth to myself my freshman year (met through pledging and crossing aKDPhi and winning Programming Chair of RCC); then conquering my posts as an AACC Junior intern, RCC VP External, and aKDPhi sister my sophomore year; and finally, fulfilling my high expectations as AACC Intern, RCC President, and aKDPhi Pledge Mom my junior year. And every year, I was grateful and humbled by the love and support of the people around me, whose strength, faith, and simple presence in my life made this juggle bearable and possible.

This year is different. I look back at the past three years with a grim satisfaction of the culmination of my hard work, and with a deep appreciation for my friends and family, but I no longer know what my next steps are. I try to do all the right things- gaining internship experience, working part-time as a waitress to pay for rent, working on my grades to get them up to par; but for what? What ends do the merits of my hard work achieve, and for what purpose? So I can sit at a tiny desk in the UN, hoping to save the world one file at a time? So I can work for some publications/news/journalism giant, grabbing coffee for Katie Couric's assistant's assistant? And I only realize now, the direction my pursuits have taken me towards...

I am still naive. I still believe and hope that I can save the world from itself; only now, instead of saving it one child at a time, by going into the world of international human rights and political advocacy. Except I fear that the latter is much more futile than the former. And I wonder whether that makes all of my hard work futile by relation.