Today is May 18th and I'm at the Pittsburgh International Airport, still waiting for my flight to Miami (the one I was supposed to get was cancelled, meaning that I'm not getting back home until tomorrow night..). But that is fine.
I haven't posted anything here in like forever, but that was another super busy school semester. Okay, here I am again, since I felt like I would better make an update to my blog before I forget the main things that happened since last time wrote in here.
Before mentioning anything else, I graduated from college! It is crazy to think that those apparently long and endless 4 years are already gone. Well, on top of everything, I am proud of it. I think I am the only one who can tell how much of a struggle and how challenging all these 4 years were for me. In a really good sense, though. I cannot tell how much I've learned and grown since I first came to RMU, in 2009, the many great friends I've made, the good people I met and the experiences I've been through along the way. Oh, I also have to mention the fact that playing tennis is no longer part of my life. This is sort of a big deal to me. After 13 or 14 years, not having to worry about practice, matches and work outs sounds kind of weird. Plus, this spring was the most demanding season I have ever had. Our team had around 23 matches to play and, in this sense, I could not be any happier that we are now over with it, just because by the end, I was more than sick of "having to play" and travel all the time. Anyway, these were by far the best 4 years of my life, and they will certainly be in my memory forever.
Other than proud, I feel a little sad as well. I was used to the life I had on campus and I enjoyed every single day that I was there, taking care of my stuff alone and the by way I wanted. At the same time, though, I am also glad. Glad to be done with college and really excited about what comes next. Urgh, too many feelings. My family came for graduation, and while we were in NYC, I secretly felt like hugging all of them, crying really hard for no specific reason, laughing by myself with my own thoughts, etc. Weird, but I have experienced something similar before. I believe this happens to me whenever big changes take place in my life. And even though it seems to be a big emotional period, it all feels good to me, in general. Feelings, especially a lot of them at the same time, make me simply feel alive and realize that I have anything but a boring and uneventful life.
As I often try to remind myself, the goal is to always seek for new and challenging experiences and to set myself goals that become progressively more difficult to achieve, so I can look back and be sure it was hard, it was scary, it was out of my comfort zone, it was demanding, but I still went out there and did it. And generally speaking, this is the way I feel about graduating right now.
I believe that it was with this same mindset that I decided to go to Italy for my Masters degree after being done with college. You know, after graduating, I could go back home, find a good job, work from 9am to 6pm and make enough money to spend it on whatever I wanted, and keep doing this for 5, 10, 20 years. Or I could choose to go out there, challenge myself into being accepted at an university in Europe, find out how all the application process works, decide which program would most benefit my long-term goals, buy my flight tickets, close my eyes and, go!
Having said that, here is the story about my next adventure: during my junior year, I started to think about what to do after college. Well, working was at the bottom of the list. I don't know what I wanna do for living yet, and I have always been afraid that once I get a real job, good and fun life would be kind of over (of course getting a real job shouldn't be that bad, but I keep thinking how many places and different experiences and blablabla that I still have to go through before finally settling down). Plus, I did not see myself living in the U.S. for much longer, and going back home right after graduation, in my mind, only meant going backwards in life. So then I came up with the idea of going to grad school somewhere in Europe where I could be able to learn a new language and continue to grasping the great benefits of living abroad.
When I got to my senior year, I did a bunch of research related to the lengh of each program, courses offered, reputation (name recognition), country, language and price. I ended up with only one university that I really wanted to go to, and other 2 or 3 that I would have been glad if they accepted me. Application processeses started. I remember spending only 2 to 3 hours applying for those 2 or 3 that I had decided to apply for, just because I am too lazy for this kind of stuff, not mentioning how annoying and boring it is to fill out those 84827472 questions and requirements and documents for each school. Now, to the one I had decided to go to...HA! That one took me a while, but well, it had to work out. After a month and a half dedicating considerable amount of time on answering personal questions, filling out paperwork, writing and rewriting motivational letters, getting recommendation letters from most of my professors (so I could choose the most appealing ones (haha)), and after making huge effort to find out how to get and send the documents they needed from me, I clicked on "submit my application profile" through their website. I was glad to know I had tried my best and thought to myself "okay, I did my job, now life goes on. Stop thinking about it and focus on the rest." Well, of course that didn't happened.
The lady from the International Office I used to talk to throughout the application period told me that I was gonna have an answer within no more than 3 months. That was painful! I was like "it is a maximum of 3 months, so every day, from November (when I submitted my application) until the end of February, can be a valid day for them to tell me if I was accepted or not..lol. Soo, yes, I did spend the next 3 months checking my emails pretty much every 10 minutes a day (judging myself as a big retard during that time), until I woke up one Wednesday morning, mid-February, to finally get that God damn email I was waiting for so long. I cried. What a great relief. My very first thought was something like " Damn girl, youre such a lucky motherfucker, holy shit, I'm happy as fuck and now I do have an answer for all those old people asking me " what are you going to do after college, my darling?!" Haha. At the same time, I was overwhelmed by the fact that I had just being accepted into a great school in a place that have always wanted to stay, and how priviledged I was for being one of the 50 lucky students to be accepted, out of who knows how many applicants, from all over the world, were also trying to get a spot. Second thought was to make sure it was not too early to call my parents to tell them about the news and let them know that Isabella was going to be away from home for at least two more years. Well, I remember spending the rest of my day and the other days of the week only thinking of how fun going to Italy would be, the places I am going to have the chance to visit in Europe, the new people I am going to meet, the new challenges I am going to face, and so on.
I am pretty sure each person has its own beliefs, rules, secrets, carmas, etc., to succeed in all different aspects of life. As I see it, if there is one thing I believe is the key to achieving whatever you want, is to actually figure out what is it that you want so badly in the future. Once you have figured it out, to me it is only a very simple matter of Idea -> Planning -> Execution -> BOOM, Results. My mom loves telling me that sometimes things don't happen the way we want them to happen or even that failing is okay and should be accepted by all of us. I agree with that, but so far in my life, most of the decisions I made happened exacty the way I had first planned, and if for some reason things were going wrong, I woud keep trying and trying and trying until I would get the results I had expected in the first place. It is only a matter of hard work, effort, patience and time.
Alright, I haven't finished this post yesterday, so today is the 19th and I am finally on the airplane on my way back to Brazil. I guess I haven't had enough time to think about what exacty I'm going to do while I am down there, but as of now, I have to finish a research project that have been working on this semester for one of my classes, then my boyfriend heads down for a couple weeks (I guess that will be the only time I will have to enjoy my summer break), then as soon as he goes back, the focus will be to get myself ready to go to Italy. Consulate appointments, passport validation, solving other bureaucacries from the university, finding a place to live, and taking as many Italian lessons as possible are all yet to be done. On a side, enjoying my family and friends, eating healthy and exercising on a daily basis, pushing myself to learn about things and keep myself informed on what is going on around the world are all part of the plan for this break until September. I am pretty sure all that will make me busy enough until I get to travel, but in case I get bored, I might sit down and write another post telling how my summer break is going!
Alright, that is all for now. Lunch is coming. 6 hours left. Great times ahead.
Isa
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