Today was another Proctor woodlands day. We woke up early in the morning and went to the first few classes, where we taught Intro to Lit with Mel and Chase. They are reading Into the Wild, so we though it would be fun if we went to their class and explained what our senior project is about. So we started off the morning summarizing what it is that we do and explain why it's important to us and how we feel about it, which was a very nice reminder now that we are halfway through our project. Afterwards we asked them what they would want their senior project to be, and at least half of the class in both blocks mentioned hiking or adventuring across the country, which made me really happy because recently I'd been thinking that not enough kids appreciate the woods anymore. It was so nice to be able to explain to someone else why we are doing something and then receive such encouraging responses.
The last class ended at 9.50, then we headed to the dinning hall to make some sandwiches for our lunch and proceeded to hike up to the cabin. We made it there rather quickly and we got ready to spend the day there. The weather was so nice, but the black flies began to swarm around us and that got very annoying. Luckily though the wind kept them at bay here and then.
Sitting at the cabin was a very strange yet enjoyable experience for me. When we first arrived I felt weird: it was very nice up there and the cabin looked very homey and overall the place just looked very inviting. But once I found a rock and sat down I started to get anxious; I kept looking for things to do, I got stressed out because I felt like I was supposed to be doing something very important and that it was just wrong to just sit down. This started only five minutes after we arrived, and so I started feeling all these things, all this guilt, and it was making me pretty uncomfortable until I acknowledged that I was feeling this way because I am just so used to being on hyper-mode all the time. Every single day I have this tight schedule and I am always running from one thing to the next, always busy. So when I found that I had hours and hours of free time I honestly did not know what to do, much less how to feel. I grabbed my journal and started to free write, which made me feel better, and I put words to the stress that I was feeling from doing nothing (which sounds contradictory). After this I was able to sit back and relax, look around and write a few poems, and I even sketched for the first time in almost a year.
I think that our senior project is benefitting me in many ways. The most obvious ones are exercise from hiking, the beautiful places that we get to go to, and the time to read and free write. But also it's giving me the opportunity to slow down and look at where I am, both physically and mentally, and prepare myself for this huge change that is about to happen in my life. I've been having all this time to reflect on my past at Proctor and to think about next year and what I want my college life to be like, and I just feel so much more prepared now because I have actually taken the time to think about what I want to take away from high school and with what attitude I want to start college. I know that I want to keep some of that anxiousness I get from doing nothing because that will stop me from being lazy (I am a big procrastinator), but I also know myself better and know that every now and then I just have to stop myself and sit back, relax, and appreciate where I am.
Today was a slow yet very meaningful day, full of reflections but also fun times. I did things that I haven't done since I was little: I climbed on a fallen tree, played with some rocks by the river and tried to climb up some rocks in the middle of a creek.
By the end of the day I'd been outside for nine hours straight and I had not touched my phone one single time (sorry for the lack of pictures!). Disconnecting from everything for one day felt so great, and I feel so good because of all the time I took to just think and get out of my hyper-mode.
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