Junior year was rough. Following a successful sophomore year, I had entered the summer assured of my own abilities and capabilities. However, as September approached, I realized that the time was ticking on the clock: the war horn of college applications had sounded in the distance, preceded by its dreaded vanguard of standardized testing. In just two years, I’d be matriculating. Suddenly aware of how quickly high school (and with it, my adolescence) would end, I put myself into as many activities as I could. Junior year would be my last hurrah before I had to apply for colleges and lock in my future. I needed to see and do everything I could before I left. Sailing! Scholastic Bowl! Robotics! Committees! I’ll do it all, I thought! I couldn’t say no to anything. Alas, I had bitten off more than I could chew, and as the seasons passed, I found myself more and more weary. My hubris had caused me to overextend, and my ego prevented me from retreating. By the end of winter, my mind felt like it was under siege. My attention was overstretched, and my energy long expended. By the end of the school year, I was completely burnt out, my motivation burned to ash. I entered a purposeful complacency: I stopped checking my email, turned off notifications from Google Classroom, and left my laptop uncharged. 

Come August, and I was now on a trip to the East Coast, visiting colleges. My mental state was far better, as I was able to rest and recuperate under the warm sun and leisurely schedule of summer. I had rid myself of all thoughts of school and returned to past hobbies and interests that I had forgotten in my mad dash during the school year. With my brain recharged, I felt sufficiently ready to resume the college application process, which had also fallen to the wayside at the end of the school year. Yet, as I stood amidst the grandiose libraries and commons of various East Coast schools, I couldn’t help but feel a mysterious thorn in my side, a nagging feeling, a shadow in the back of my mind. Was college the only thing I had to focus on over the summer? Was there something else I had to do? I received my answer when one of the Editors-in-Chief of “The Weekly” messaged me on Snapchat. Ah, I had signed up to be a columnist for “The Weekly.” And would you look at that, the deadline for the first draft of my column had already passed. Whoops. I tried to think back, looking at notes I had left at the end of Junior year. I found the few ideas that I had come up with tired, uninspired, and, worst of all, impersonal. None of my ideas had much to do with me. Any other Parker student could’ve stepped in for me, and no one would notice. My Google doc was a sore reminder of my mental state at the end of the school year. Those ideas would do me no good. I needed to come up with something new, something that would feel distinctly “Daniel,” so that I could feel pride when I saw my name next to my articles.

I had previously mentioned that over this summer, I was able to return to some hobbies and interests that I had put on hold. I didn’t realize just how important my pastimes and leisure activities were. I had considered them to be unimportant or as distractions from my goal, which, while on the surface was to try out different activities, was in hindsight a subconscious attempt to stack my college resume. I realized that my interests were what gave me color as a person, and without them, I was reduced to a shell of myself. And so, I decided on the theme of my column: Daniel’s Manual, a series of guides and how-tos concerning topics that are important to me.