Dec. 9

12/09/2025 10:01 Correspondence 112

The finish line is in sight, and I plan to pass it trucking. Or at least as fast as I can make it. Tomorrow at 9 is more or less my last big school thing to do. It's my written Mandarin exam, and you know me, I'm stressed about it. But it also comes at a strange moment and strange time, because I've done the math and I'm pretty sure I would make an A in that class even if I didnt take it. It only accounts for 5% of my grade, and I've done very well in everything else. Now, I am not the kind that would skip an exam. A zero would kill me, and I don't want you to get any ideas about me, even just bringing it up. But knowing that information has put me in a weird space. On one hand, I'm no less stressed about it somehow. Im clammy and anxious and feel consumed by the very fact i have an exam tomorrow. On the other hand, though, it's been much harder to motivate myself enough to study. I feel like learning that information has just cursed me with the worst of both worlds. A curse on my mind, I just can not shake. Come this time tomorrow, though, it will be done.

The first day I spent here, I woke up bright and early and took a refreshing shower. In that shower, while I was still getting my bearings about me, I dropped my shampoo bottle. It was a generic bottle of Head Shoulders, the plastic cap of which shattered on the shower tile. I cleaned it all up and moved on with my day. Or at least I thought I had cleaned it all up. For this morning, when I took my shower, I dropped my bottle of soap. When I reached down to pick it up, I spied a small shard of translucent blue plastic. I was rocked to that day, that very first day. It would be my second entry, I suppose. Now, ignoring what that says about how well that shower gets cleaned, it really makes me relive that first week. That plastic served as an idol to the person I used to be when I first arrived here. A testimony to how I've changed and how I haven't. I feel like I have expressed in this medium how I've been changed. Through growth and eye-opening/world-shattering experiences. But recently, as the days to break tic down, I've been finding myself focused on how I haven't changed at all. Aspects of my character that have remained stagnant, for better or worse. Maybe being trapped only in my own eyes skews my perspective, but I feel like I have more or less remained the same. I've remained somewhat of a constant in my actions and beliefs. Trping here at this computer overlooking this window, overlooking life. Do I live? Is this expression of my inner mind trapping me from living? Does writing this account of my days glue me to who I always am? I look at my friends, my very best friends, and I see how much they have changed. I look at my reflection in the ghostly window that sits over the sit, sits over this computer, and I see exactly the person I saw on my first night. I mean, maybe that's an oversimplification. Some things are different. I would describe those things as growths. My hair, my body, and I would like to think my mind. But not much change. 

When I look at that ghost in the window, how should I feel? Comfort? Trapped? Indifference? I don't think the ghost knows either. 

This topic has been on the tip of my mind for a while, but has only grown. These thoughts started on my trip to Charleston to visit one of my best friends. Through my eyes, college had changed her considerably more than me. We were talking about this one late night on a walk through the ancient homes of Charleston. After a few minutes of dialogue on the topic, she asked me something along the lines of "Do you think college has changed me for the better or worse?" I awncered "for the better" as she seemed so much more confident and sure of herself. That weekend, she had told me story after story, both good and bad, as well as name after name of new friends and enemies. I took a minute before saying, "You know, I feel like I haven't changed much at all." She said, "Yeah, you were already so grown up in high school, though. I don't think you needed to change." I said, 

"Hmm"

And we kept walking. 

Goodnight friends,

Calvin Landreth