At night, while walking between two streetlights, the second shadow creeps up dangerously fast from behind you and jumps onto the one you stare at between your feet and merge into one. You jump, thinking someone’s crept up on you and is about to mug you. That’s how it feels like to go into 2022 – the second jumping shadow that gave me a start.
2021 had felt like a packed train carriage that has already opened its doors at my stop and I was still busy looking at my phone. Enough with the metaphors. What it all means is that I think it is crazy how many roles I’m have donned in a short period in time: January I was still an officer cadet wasting my life in mosquito infested outfields with 3 day old camo paint on my face; April I was an officer teaching a new batch of cadets hoping to have inspired something; August I was flying off into the unknown towards University life and leading a double-life with a pseudo-American accent. Each of these experiences require a lifetime to fully savour, so it feels like I’ve truly hurtled into adulthood on an express train.
Perhaps that is why the return to spring term feels unnatural in many ways because the shadow have already caught up and I know this year will not have many surprises for me. This year I will get to fully immerse into the student experience. I tell myself that as I try to drag myself through the jetlag and await the first day of school again. I want to be a proper student now, enjoy acting my age and doing dumb stuff. Otherwise, time slips away just like that.
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