I started my blogging year writing about a conversation I had with a little girl about “’paradise”, and how a word could mean many different things to different people.

The winter version: Steeped tea and strudel

My final year of Undergrad is coming to an end.
And this year, “U of T” for me was about goodbyes.

Five years on campus means habits I’ve developed, relationships I’ve built, couches I’ve become attached to, and routines I’m comfortable in.

It is hard to envision that come September there will be no agonizing over conflicting classes, calculating textbook budgets and walking into wrong classrooms on the first day.

Saying goodbye to campus has been an intentional part of my year, and I’ve taken time to savour places, spend time with people and indulge in favourite foods.

“U of T” is also slowly shifting from being my present, to becoming my past.

When you think about it really, goodbyes really are just about transitions.
They are doorposts to new spaces, new seasons and new goals.

This is the time of the year when
we say goodbye to winter, and hopefully welcome spring.
we say goodbye to courses, professors and classmates, and hello to the exam grind.
we say goodbye to university and prepare to go to larger work environments.

There are three essential habits I practice in times of transition:

1. I give myself options

When the season starts to change, it becomes important to pick clothing that accommodates the fluctuating weather. Wearing layers I can remove or add is a good way of providing myself with many choices that can be combined in different ways to meet any curveball the weather might throw at me.

The same philosophy applies to studying for exams or looking for jobs.
Divide your daily studying schedule into sections with different options for the day. This makes it easier to adjust to potential time you might lose to unforeseen circumstances, or even just give you room for those poor, unproductive study days.

Expand your criteria when looking for jobs and experiment with different times, environments and expectations. I’ve been looking for evening jobs for next year, and it’s surprising how future plans change when jobs don’t span the typical 9AM-5PM time slot.

2.  I listen to good music

Need I say more?
Music will be with us for most of the study season. It will energize us when we are tired, isolate us when we need focus, and empathize with us in the wee hours of dawn before a final.

Meet musician Mandy, who herself is in a time of transition.

Her personal EP is in the works.

Check out her free downloads on Facebook
Her stuff is my current study playlist. : )

3. I surround myself with good company

Keep your relationships close.
They will become your rock in times of trouble.
But even more than that, they also will live completely different experiences, and can offer you a completely different perspective on the future. I have friends who are taking time off next year to travel, moving to another country to work, starting entry-level jobs, or are continuing with Education.

For the last five years, U of T has been a space for other lives to intersect with mine, stories that have built little bridges of relationships, and long hours of conversation.

It is time to move on,
but I am not going alone,
and that makes all the difference.

I’m horrible at introducing myself. I’m not that great at saying goodbye, either, so I thought I’d get it over with at the beginning of this post. This is my last post for Life @ U of T. Blogging here has been the best ‘responsibility’ that I’ve ever had in my life. I feel super blessed to be attending an institution that offers such great opportunities, and I’ve met the coolest people on campus through this blog. I really, really encourage you guys to look around — there are so many awesome things to do on campus. Bye people. This has been awesome (picture me awkwardly patting you on the shoulder).
Now, let’s talk about change.

Last week was my birthday.

Source: http://wifflegif.com/tags/56040-adulthood-gifs?page=2

I turned 20. I keep telling people that I’m old. I am old. I’ve been alive for two whole decades. I’ve lived for 5 world cup finals (and another one this summer!), the rise and fall of email, and the completion of the human genome project. I’ve lived 170 times longer than the life-span of summer-born monarch butterflies. I. Am. Old.

I’m freaking out because I feel like things are happening too fast. There is no way overalls are considered vintage! What do you mean, I’m already halfway through my undergraduate career?

Cue Freak Out. Source: http://www.jest.com/article/174509/50-freakout-gifs

My time at Life @ U of T is over? I’M TWENTY YEARS OLD? It’s scary thinking about how fast time flies. I can’t help but think of all the things that I could have done, experiences that I should have had, and wonder why I didn’t take advantage of the opportunities when they were sitting in my lap. At the same time, though, I think about all of the awesome crap that happened, too — my prom, my first time on an airplane, my acceptance into the University of Toronto, the first awesome job I’ve ever had — and I can’t help but be grateful to be living the life that I do.

In a nutshell, I am happy. I’m ready to take on the next decade — and the next year — and whatever comes with it. This has been an awesome year, and I’m looking forward to see what the next decade will bring.

Love, Hawa

It’s almost the end of the year.

The end of the school year always makes me fidgety. I have to remind myself to work at a slow, steady pace — as much as I’d like to storm through all of my assignments and get them over with, slow and steady wins the race. I’m fidgety about my assignments, my exams, my grades, summer school, winter taking forever to get the heck out and make way for spring.

To clear my mind, I have a personal tradition of spring cleaning. I don’t spring clean in the regular sense. (I do dust my windows and clean under my bed, but that’s more “Mom-please-stop-yelling-at-me cleaning” than “spring cleaning”). I prepare myself for a brand new start, so that I’m ready to walk into the summer and the new school year feeling like I have a blank slate. Here’s what I will “clean” before the end of the year:

I clean out my computer. I organize my photos, delete anything that’s just taking up space, tuck my old lecture notes, assignments, and readings in a folder far away, and make sure that my desktop is as uncluttered as, well, a brand new Mac.

I clean out my closet. My favourite thing to do is to complain about how few clothes I have. By the time I’m done putting my winter clothes away, organizing my spring/summer wardrobe (yay!) and doing away with anything that don’t wear anymore, I feel like I’ve gone on a shopping spree.

I clear out my phone. I delete defunct phone numbers, and numbers that I don’t need (I mean, how often am I going to call that girl I met one time in my first year ANT100 lecture who I also have on Facebook and Twitter?). I get rid of apps that I don’t use, songs that I don’t listen to, and upload old photos to my computer.

I maintain my social media accounts. By maintain I mean delete the 100-something celebrities I follow on Instagram and Twitter and any photos and posts that might compromise my future (Just kidding…*nervous laughter*).

At the end of it all, I feel good. I feel refreshed. I feel like I can take on the world. It might sound ridiculous to some of you. In my head, by physically creating a fresh start, my mind is ready for whatever the new school year might bring.

For this week’s post I had the hardest time coming up with something to write about. Over the last year, I’ve been writing weekly blog posts for CTSI, in partnership with Student Life. The posts generally follow rough guidelines:

• Word count: 400-700
• Text blocks must be broken up by images
• Submit by noon the day before it needs to be posted
• Cover student life topics (in my case, also the educational aspect)
• Write myself into each post.

Apart from the above, there really are few other rules, which means plenty of room to explore potential topics and write about all kinds of experiences.

Having to go through this process weekly for an entire year, has taught me a few things.

 1.    You almost always have to do it again.

ahh track changes, my good friend.

A blogging job means that I am not the final authority on the readiness of my writing. My post is submitted and subjected to comments and edits, which I consider in my revisions, before posting.

The feedback is crucial to me, as it gives me a better sense of what is expected of me, and points out certain bad writing habits I tend to slide into.

 2.    Find the creativity, or it might not find you.

come here you!

Not submitting a blog post on the basis of not having anything to write about is a pretty bad reason. Yet, a deadline waiting to be met is also one of the stressful things to deal with.

The key is to plan ahead, have backup ideas, and venture into new environments to look for interesting topics.

 3.    Your voice is important. Use it.

“HEY YOU ACROSS THE STREET …you have nice hair…”

This year, I’ve written about student learning, de-stressing, achievement, and done professor interviews. But I’ve also incorporated my own interests in art, music, travels, and poetry into my posts.

I’ve become more adept at making connections between different parts of me, and crafting them into reflective pieces of writing that satisfy my job expectations, but also showcase who I am. 

 4.    Professionalism is a matter of choices. 

just suck it up and keep going jasmine.

Meeting my deadlines every week means I have to know how long roughly it takes for me to draft a post, do the necessary research, or create illustrations, and include time for potential revisions. This has to be fitted into my schedule regardless of whether I have essays to hand in, functions to attend, or motivation to write.

Having to choose every week to begin the process all over again, has allowed me to experience a degree of discipline in my writing that I wouldn’t otherwise know.

 5.    You won’t accomplish everything you set out to do. 

uhh… let me get back to you on that one.

I planned to do three professor interviews, and explore more thought-provoking topics such as technology in the classroom. But the grind of schoolwork caught up, and posts that required a lot of extra research were pushed back, and never actually came to fruition.

What I am choosing to focus on, however, is what I did manage to do: I successfully did two interviews, blogged on a  variety of topics, and even wrote a couple of more practical posts I had not planned on writing.

Looking back, I feel blessed when I reflect on my personal and professional growth. These lessons have made me a better writer, a better worker, a better student and a better teacher.

As a student blogger who set out to write about learning,
I’d say I’ve done pretty well.