October is over?!

I can hardly believe it. November is here. I love it. I love the cold weather, sweaters, hot chocolate, scarves, and pumpkin everything. There’s just something about this time of the year that makes me the happiest.

But, this is a post about October, so I’ll save my November obsession for another time.

October was good to me, Allhumdullilah. After my last post, I really didn’t think life would begin to flow in the right path. When life goes so low, it’s so hard to imagine it getting better. Adversity is real; it will come and go, but once you’ve learned from it — once you look back at the experience with a weird sense of gratitude — you know it’s over, you know you’ve learned.

I learned. A lot.

I learned to be kinder to myself. I learned to value the temporary nature of life. I learned to do the things I want to do — no excuses.

You know when you want to do something, but you put it off because, well, you always have tomorrow, right? The thing is, we don’t. We don’t always have tomorrow — let alone another second, minute, or hour.

Maybe that kind of mindset is grotesque, but it pushed me to things I had been putting off. I reached out to that friend. I shared that idea. I took steps to make my dreams reality.

Aside from these mental shifts, I also had many wonderful experiences this October, Allhumdullilah.

I had so much fun in my classes. I always talk about how college has not been my “scene.” I am not the most social human on earth. However, if there is one thing I can do, it’s go to class and smile the whole time.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but there’s this thrill of leaving class with new knowledge. As I wake up and go to my 8 A.M. art history class, I get excited. What will I learn? How will this knowledge contribute to my life? Leaving that class, I enter my Norwegian literature class — and the same excitement inundates my heart. I am reading a play from the 1960s, and laughing because for some reason the jokes are funny. Then, I go to my international relations class, and my professor asks me how I would solve the poverty crisis in Africa. I look at her confused. I, an undergraduate, solve poverty? I couldn’t, right? But, then, I think. I start discussing the importance of the rule of law, infrastructure, institutionalized military regimes, health and human capital — and at that moment, I feel like I can actually help. I can use this knowledge, apply it to real-world scenarios, and contribute to a mission bigger than myself.

I guess knowledge and school give me hope that there is always more to learn — and with that intellectual enrichment I can make the world better, insha’Allah.

I also baked this cookie.

Though this recap sounds very happy, rest assured that this is real life. In real life, there are lows. I have had the worst schedule. Why do quizzes, papers, and exams all land on the same day? I have had the most kitchen fails. How did I manage to burn a knife in a frying pan? I felt lost. Why is life confusing?

However, life is an adventure — and sometimes you fall, sometimes you fly.

On to November. Let’s hope this month is filled with (too) many pumpkin spice lattes.