There is a certain peace that comes from performing menial tasks, like washing dishes, cooking, cleaning your room, and most recently, packing your bags. The peace of mind that comes from accomplishing something productive that needs to be done, while not the most thrilling of passtimes, is ceratinly welcome in the busy, hectic schedule that is a high-schooler's life.
I have always enjoyed the simple act of washing dishes. I like things to be meticulously clean when I eat off of them. Since I was 7 years old, my job has been washing dishes whilst my brother takes care of drying and my stepbrother outs them away. I enjoy the community and the fun of spending time with my family. We get to share a lot of stories and jokes with one another, and take some time out of our day to spend time being together, which rarely happens in a split household.
I also enjoy towel-whipping my brother when I'm on drying duty, but that's beisdes the point
Cooking is a day-to-day activity that requires a basic amount of creativity and ingenuity to perform.
As dorm students, we seem to find great joy in the simple act of preparing our own meals. We get to reclaim a bit of authority in the day-to-day function of our lives, instead of eating what is provided for us by the cafeteria. We get to make whatever we want (within the realms of our modest budgets). Spending time at Woodstock has really awakened my desire to cook for myself. I am excited by the prospect of going home and having the resources to create an extravaganza of food from several global locations.
I believe this is why the Masterchef competition of the French 5 class was such a sucess. We were given the opportunity to be creative, make something delicious within a certain budget, and enjoy it altogether as a group. The fact that it was a competition came second to the fun of creating our own meals.
Unlike many teenagers, I atually find pleasure in cleaning my room. I'll put on my heavy metal playlist and power through the piles of laundry and dust bunnies, straightening surfaces and organizing my cupboard. I am always unable to concentrate in a messy environment, which is probably why our room always has perfect room check scores and I get little homework finished before 7 pm. Cleaning gives me time to think, reflect, and then move on with my day. Tacking the seemingly-impossible task of cleaning out my cupboard lets me think about everything else that's happening in my life, and I can happily concentrate on schoolwork when the time comes.
The offshoot of cleaning up is it's larger form of packing everything you own into suitcases and tin trunks. Packing always feels like the beginning of a new adventure to me. Wenever I need to pack, I'm going to do something crazy a cross-US roadtrip in an RV, going on a choir tour to Whistler, British Columbia, or, heck, going to live in India for a year! Packing to go home, on the other hand, promises time with my family and friends, sleeping in my own bed, and seeing my cat. A different form of adventure, but it's the alternative adventure of venturing home.
Packing is a simple activity that promises a lot of excitement to come, which is probablywhy I've already finished my packing for this winter break...
(credit to Allie Brosh of http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ for this meme. If you've never read that blog go read it. I guarantee you'll almost pee your pants laughing)
Best of luck to everyone cramming for exams and writing their butts off getting all these posts done!
Emily
i like your post alot! what i love about it is that you have taken such a common topis and something we dont even think twice about like cleaning and represented it as something meaningful in our lives. another thing i like is that i could relate to it. to make thepost even better you could remove typos suck as writing "tacking" when i'm guess you meant tackling, making these small changes would make the flow of your post better.
ReplyDeleteOne last thing to improve this post, you could make your ending better, because it did not sound like so much of a conclusion, it only talks about packing, while there is so much more to this post.