I guess I never really talked about the wrapping up of this grad school application season, now that I received my final acceptances. It was definitely a rough 8 months I had to deal with...some of the most stressful times of my life. I'm really really happy that I came out of it all alive. I never thought I'd live to see the day where I'd be attending my dream school. I have selected to attend Boston this fall for their Journalism program. This was the only Journalism program I had applied to and I got in! What better way to indicate that this is the path I should choose than to slap this acceptance in my face on March 12? Right?

Following Boston U, I got accepted to San Francisco State and San Jose State, both with funding offers which I am unhappy to say am turning down. Of course I'm happy I'm going to Boston but at the same time, I love the Bay Area and would kill to live in San Francisco someday but then again, as my mother said, it's time for me to take on another city. A part of me doesn't want to leave Southern California but another part of me knows that it's time to go. I can't believe I'm moving across the country living in a city I've never visited before in my life, and on my own for the most part where I don't know a soul and don't know the town. I'm scared. I'll be attending a brand new school in the fall. It'll be a brand new start all over once again. I was only given 2 years to adjust to the changes in Santa Cruz for undergrad and I thought that in itself was a large transition but I imagine it won't even compare to what it'll be like in Boston. Complete opposite end of the coast where the people aren't as nice as the Yay Area, I won't have a car, I have to rely on public transits when I already have a horrible sense of direction (I feel like I'm going to be about 5 hours late to my first day of class), not being able to make any friends, not being a part of a sports team for the first time in my life which is where I've made most of my friends, and of course, homesickness. I definitely got homesick my first year at Santa Cruz, and I was still living in the same state! How will I feel being an entire coast away? How?

I think another thing I'm afraid of is depression. For me, depression sets in every fall and slowly subsides around winter time. I'm not really sure why, but the past two years I was in Santa Cruz, every fall I went through pretty bad depression where I felt the lowest of the low. I can't pretend to be wholly excited about moving to a brand new city where I don't know a soul when I know I'm probably going to go through depression and apathy once again. I do every year, and it's terrible. It's not a fun time. You just feel like shit every day and you sometimes don't know what reasons you have for getting out of bed. What if I don't like my professors? What if I don't like my advisors? What if I don't like my roommate, whoever it will be that I choose to live with? What if I don't like my classes or my classmates? What if I hate everyone and make no friends? These are problems that everyone goes through I suppose, but it's strange how it was so easy for me to become depressed in my dream city at my dream college with a ton of friends and yet I still felt so alone. I felt really truly alone a lot during fall quarter both junior and senior year.

These thoughts that I have are rather quite normal but it also shows that relocating anywhere is going to make you avoid the inevitability of learning how to overcome an emotional slump of adjusting to a new city. A lot of people like the idea of starting new and starting fresh with a clean slate but it doesn't always work that way. I already know that there's going to be something about Boston that'll make me sad for some reason and I'll always miss home. I mean it took me two years to adjust Santa Cruz, and by the time I adjusted and loved it, it was time for me to leave. I wonder if it'll be like that in Boston, and if it will be, well, then, at least I know I had the past 2 years to prep for those emotional slumps and apathy that come by every Fall. Hopefully it won't, and I don't have to think that life is always a tradition, so hopefully it won't have to be like that. All I can really do is make the best of a situation and if there's something I don't like, I can fix it. Inspiration to change and motivation to strive for the better don't have a schedule, you know.

Here's to a brand new chapter in a brand new city and a brand new life. We'll see where it'll take me, but wherever it does, I hope that during the process, I will continue to grow, and that is all I can ask for.