Return to Sender

After a long and much needed winter break, returning to college can be extremely difficult. Especially when you’ve enjoyed the comfort of your own home, with your family, enjoying the holidays, with very little responsibility at all. It’s simply just comfortable. But sometimes the recipe to success calls for discomfort instead.

Sure, the comfort I embraced during winter break was relaxing. Yet, it doesn’t quite compare to the discomfort of stepping back into a world of passion and education back on campus. The first month of second semester at UT Austin was filled to the brim with busy school days, bottomless assignments, and new opportunities, which surely created some discomfort, but also brought a spark in my life.

At a certain point, you have to decide not to be stuck anymore, or at least that you don’t want to be anymore. And you’ll stay stuck if you continue to live in comfort. Once you start adding responsibilities, obligations, and tasks that are meaningful to your progress, then you take a step into a flurry of discomfort.

It’s not the discomfort of standing in the cold, though. Instead, it’s the discomfort of not having enough time in a day to do all of the things you want to do. I want to watch numerous movies every day, listen to new music, go to classes, do schoolwork, write about the films or music I watch, go to a club meeting, hangout with friends, workout, take photographs, film something, and write a blog all in 24 hours each and every day.

It gets tiring, sure, but it’s fun living with so much purpose, knowing that you’re creating, exploring, experiencing, and advancing in life. It’s fun living in the suffocation of having too much passion, which allows for growth in identity and wisdom. Returning to school is so uncomfortable that it becomes comfortable, living with passion and inspiration as fuel for success every morning.