Birthday Wishes from Past Kat

Today I received birthday wishes from everyone (and an awesome surprise party put on by R & A, so happy! Didn't realize I had so many great friends that I shared hilarious/embarrassing/amazing memories with), including myself. To be more specific, an email from 18 year old Kat who was about to graduate from high school.

She (I?) made predictions about the future. Most of them have not (yet?) come true. The email was long, but it ended on a hopeful note:

I could ramble on forever but I'm sure you're tired of hearing from your 18 year old self. How old are you now... 22? Good grief, old fart (:

I hope you haven't done anything illegal or anything you really regret. Life has been good, and life will continue to be good if you let it. So don't ever give up. Because you have 18 - now 22 years of self interest invested in YOU. Don't let that go to waste.

I believe in you.

They all do.

It's 12:16 and mother has turned off the shower water. She's probably going to walk in and yell at me for not going to sleep earlier - we're going hiking tomorrow after all. Oh, there goes the door. I guess it's time to call it a wrap.

MEAT forever (:

Peace, love, & canker sores.

Kathleen Tang, age 18
June 8, 2008

PS. Happy birthday!

Almost there

It's strange to think that in eleven days I will be a Harvard College graduate.

My academic learning, for all intents and purposes, has already come to an end. I submitted my final paper last week, which ran almost six pages over the limit. Academically I have to say that I am satisfied. Of course, I'm no longer the straight A student that I was in high school, but each year my grades saw great improvement and I have always resonated well with my social anthropology courses -- resulting in a department recommendation for cum laude. Graduating with honors when I've prioritized extra curriculars throughout college? I'll take that.

Socially, it has been a topsy turvy journey for me all throughout college, and even to the end it remains this way. As a happy-go-lucky person I've found that the way people make and retain friends in college (or at least at Harvard) is through constant communication. Not being the best at this (and always having a boyfriend to hang out with) has often led to complacency, but I still feel blessed to know that there are many people that I care about here and who (hopefully) care bout me as well.

The future is a constant thought on my mind. As I sit on the dish chair in my otherwise emptied out room (the girl who wanted the dish chair never came to pick it up), I read a line in Middlesex that entreats rereading, "the yellow globes of streetlamps glow, aureoled in the mist". This line describes how I feel about the future. The lanes of tomorrow are lit, glowing and promising but ultimately indiscernible. I'm scared. I'm hopeful. I'm almost there.