The Almanac

Hi all!

I want to preface this post by saying that I'm not religious. I'm not here to knock people who are and I certainly don't care what your personal belief system is. I was just raised in a household that had literally no hint of God fearing or God caring. It just wasn't something I was exposed to.

As I child I was always told that I could choose what to believe and my family would support me no matter what. I never took to God. I never took to fate either. But sometimes I entertain the notion.

A lot of times in my life something that appears bad has come around to give me great strength. A terrible relationship taught me about the importance of respect and consent. A terrible year of education taught me about the importance of mental health and self esteem. I'm here today to tell you what a disappointing rejection taught me.

In a very long series of posts I told you guys the story of my last attempt at applying for the Cultural Exchange. I ended that series with a spiel about how much I have changed since last year and how much more prepared I feel. And while that all remains true I made another realization last week that kind of blows that all out of the water.

So last semester of uni was really tough for me. I'll try not to go into too much detail but I need to put it into perspective for you. There was this one class. Funny how one tiny thing can take you down so much. This one class I knew I wasn't going to be good at but I thought that learning it could assist me in other areas of my writing. This one class had a brand new teacher. We were like the test rats and the teacher was a new line of blush not fit for human application.

That class was hell. The teacher was incapable of setting proper deadlines, explaining what was expected of us, giving constructive feedback, basically anything pertaining to being an effective teacher. Instead of facilitating exploration of ideas she would ask students to start entirely anew if they ever incurred any issues. And this is where my biggest problem lies. I had to change my assignment, the assignment that we were supposed to work on for six months and was worth 100% of our grade, twice.

The first time was my own choice and occurred in good time to complete before the due date. The second time I was forced to by the teacher with no explanation as to why and with only five weeks before the due date. That's right, folks. Six months of work to complete in five weeks. Add onto that the fact that she vetted everything I did and so two weeks before the due date I still had no solid concept to work with.

A while before this I had huge troubles with anxiety and depression that caused me to drop out of high school. I had managed to keep it under control except in times of insurmountable stress. This situation was definitely something I would qualify as insurmountable stress. My anxiety sparked up so bad that I was throwing up every morning, spending the whole day feeling nauseous, refusing to eat anything and the list goes on. I had headaches all the time. I lost around five kilos. I wasn't sleeping. It was like hell.

I managed to get myself a two week extension on the project and complete the project on time but talking about it still brings me to tears. Afterward I honestly felt worthless. All of the time I'd spent on other projects and building my confidence was now wasted. And for a good two weeks I considered deferring second semester or maybe even dropping out all together. But then I remembered Disney.

One of the stipulations of the Cultural Exchange Program is that you cannot differ the semester prior to your arrival. If I deferred second semester Disney would be off the cards entirely. So I stuck it out. I attended my first week at uni and let me tell you, this semester is going to be rainbows. One of my classes is even about getting work out there for people to see. Work that I'm proud of. And you know who I'd be approaching? People who have connections at Walt Disney Animation Studios! People who could be interesting the script that I wrote as part of my portfolio for Disney.

I know I've asked you to imagine a whole lot of things in the past but imagine that!

So I don't want to be one of those people who harps on about 'things happening for a reason' but if I'd been accepted into the program when I tried to apply last year I would have had no reason left to stick it out through the horror of a semester I just experienced. I wouldn't have gotten to see through all of these amazing opportunities. I would have missed out on so much.

Now I can look back on that experience and say that while it wasn't fun at the time I'm genuinely glad it happened. Because if things have been different for me then, things would be so different for me now. And I honestly feel like this is the better of the two realities.

- Lily