Second semester of senior year is the easiest semester you’ll ever have!

That’s the general consensus among college students, I think. It’s certainly what I thought as I looked ahead during my younger years at UA. I pictured easy classes, a set-in-stone future plan, an overflow of free time to get coffee with friends—all the good things. 

But from where I stand, more than halfway through my second semester of senior year, this has been the hardest semester I’ve ever had. Harder than first semester freshman year, when I experienced the common difficulty of finding my place on campus and battled the loneliness that comes along with it. Harder, even, than the semester before I took my MCAT exam, when I was drowning in 21 hours of classes and leaving Rodgers Library at 1 AM five nights a week. 

Somehow, this semester has brought hardships I never anticipated and quite honestly, never wanted. Shifting relationships, incredibly challenging coursework, days filled with “lasts”, and heartbreaking losses. Hard feelings, hard classes, hard changes—definitely not the victory lap I thought I had secured after three and a half years at the Capstone. 

Over the past few months, I’ve thought more times than I can count about last semester. I’ve wished deeply for some way to go back to those golden days: football games and weekend getaways and what seemed like win after win. Getting into medical school. Cherished moments with my best friends. To me, last semester held the fullness of life that I longed to find in college. 

At the close of the semester, I was content and joyful; I wanted, more than anything, to carry those feelings into my last months at UA. But when the hard things came and I couldn’t seem to get my bearings, last semester felt so far away. One afternoon in January on the phone with my mom, I told her “I wish I had just graduated in December.” It was the truth. I could have ended on a high note— none of these hard feelings, hard classes, and hard changes included. 

But time passes and the weather changes and within this semester, I’ve felt myself grow. I have accepted some things that I never wanted to come to terms with and I have pushed past some disappointments that shook me to my core. 

One of my favorite authors in American literature, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote an essay called “Experience” in 1844. I read it during the spring of my sophomore year and it resonated with me in a way that continues to surprise me when I return to the text. 

The general premise of “Experience” is that gaining perspective on life while we are engaged in the act of living is really, really hard. In my favorite line of the essay, Emerson writes, “We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.” I think this is brilliant. We really do. The surfaces of life are so varied, and I’ve experienced this firsthand. 

To be completely candid, the surfaces of my life until this semester have been so smooth that I took them for granted. In hindsight, what I thought was rough ice was really just a little bumpy. At the same time, though, if you would have asked me in December if I had learned in college how to “skate well amid the surfaces”, I would have told you that I certainly had. Send me to the Olympics with the ice dancers. I’ve got this. 

But at the first sign of really rough ice, I fell. And the fall was painful and bruising and jarring, all at the same time. I hadn’t really learned to skate well at all—not until now. 

So, when I told my mom back in January that I wished I had graduated in December, I’ve come to realize that doing so would have resulted in me leaving Alabama without learning one of the most important lessons I can imagine learning: how to skate. The lessons I learned after I stood up and took those first few strides were so hard but so formative.

I’ve learned resilience that I know I’ll need for the rest of my life, for the rest of the surfaces I’ll encounter. I’ve leaned on my friends, my family, and my God to hold my hands during a time that I really expected to be the smoothest ice imaginable. I’ve learned perspective that keeps me from looking down at my skates and up at what’s ahead of me. I think that now, when I walk across the stage at Coleman Coliseum in May, I will be able to say that I have honestly learned to skate well. 

I can’t be certain, though, because the definition of well is a shifting target. The surfaces that we as humans encounter are unpredictable and sometimes so much harder to deal with than we want. Learning to skate is a forever kind of thing. But once you’ve stood up from a hard fall once, the next time it is a lot easier. The most important thing to remember, I think, is to never lose heart. What a beautiful thing to realize that in front of us is more ice to skate on—no, sorry, not just skate on. Skate well on.  

Brittany Johnson is a senior majoring in biology.