Everybody knows it hurts to grow up
and everybody does...
the years go on and we're still fighting it
we're still fighting it

- Ben Folds

Bittersweet smiles, compensated-for tears, and lots of things to laugh at: so, has been my year. My year-long French course took "best class" honors. In it, I found my first date of the school year, cool teachers and lectors, a new friend, and lots of fun in every class I wasn't too sleep-deprived for. Oh - and enough French knowledge to pass the language competency requirement. The Aesthetics and Language of Web Design came next, giving me renewed hope that meaningful art, stories, and connections could, in fact, exist through the medium of cold, dispassionate technology. And of course, Body, Gender, and Sexuality, just for being about body, gender, and sexuality and giving me an excuse to buy a book called Making Sex.

Palevsky's mouse problem gave me the traumatic experiences of finding two undead mice stuck in glue traps at various hours of the night and day, and hearing and seeing untold numbers running through my room and that of my suitemate, and our bathrooms. After being bewildered, disgusted, and annoyed in succession, I finally learned to like them, and even tried to catch one to keep as a pet. It's true - the opposite of love isn't hate, or even complete revulsion.

And then, in the vein of complete revulsion - err, love, there was my always-strange assortment of romantic attempts, conquests, and crushing defeats. The guy who gave me one of the most unpleasant dating experiences of my life gave me the opportunity to see the dorm I'm living in next year. A brief interaction with someone in my house helped me overcome my seeing-movies-alone-fear, and for the first time I'm just as good of friends with a friend I dated after the fact as I was before. And of course, there was the guy I met on the bus back home, and an encounter or two I probably shouldn't mention for legal reasons.

One year, a few new friends, a few of those I can even still call friends, some people to write to and call over the summer. So it goes.

And I'm braver with streets, and revolving doors, and getting better at getting my point across on sensitive issues. I'm a macintosh user now, and have discovered the disappointment of a ridiculously mild Chicago winter, and have realized that I'm never going to wear that calf-length black fur coat that looks like something straight out of a 70's pimp's closet, and given it away to goodwill.

I've also learned that living in an orange and purple building is fine, unless it has yellow stairways. Cloud-watching is better at night. Guys can be sexy even in sparkly tights and lipstick. A cubicle in the library is still the best place for me to get work done. There's no point in going to class if 1) it's boring or 2) you'll just sleep through it anyway.

All in all, it was a year of new experiences, and exciting ones. I realized that I have a couple friendships now where the other person, not I, is "the deep one." It's strange not to be "the deep one." And many metaphorical bulls were seized by their horns.

Weird experiences, strange times. Triumph, melancholy, mock horror, and tons of amusement.

No regrets.

You find yourself at a campsite in the woods, and you then decide to take a hike. There are two paths. One lies directly along the edge of the canyon, and the path is treacherous to say the least. But the scenery that lies alongside it is beautiful without compare. You realize that to choose this path means both great risk, and the possibility of great reward.

And then there is the other path. This one's still nice to look at, but more importantly, it's also nice to travel. There's no real danger involved with it, it's more fun and carefree instead of being deep and majestic.

The best thing about these paths, though, is that they aren't mutually exclusive. You can choose to take just one, yes, but you can also take them both, in either order, and even alone or with others at different times of day. You could even decide just to stay in your room and not go anywhere at all, but you'd be disappointed in yourself for missing so much. So you go out, and you choose a path.

So I, being cautious by nature in unfamiliar situations, decided to take the safe path, figuring that the more dangerous one was always something I could choose to walk down later, once I got more comfortable with the easier trail.

But then, out of nowhere, after hardly any time spent hiking on that safe path, I managed to fall down into the canyon anyway.

"How?" you may ask, or "Why?"

And I am just as baffled. To be thrust down the face of a mountain without warning and with complete finality when I thought I was taking a dangerless path, is astonishing to say the least.

It seems the only explanation is the unpredictability of the great outdoors. Sometimes nature's out to get us, and sometimes people want to "head us off at the pass." So it goes. There are other trails, other forests without such clear-cut choices. And of course, the largest consolation: only instincts said that was the best path anyway. That which lies out there, being more open to discovery and less closed to exploration may be better indeed, even if only by that virtue alone.