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It was July.

Classes started in August.

Yongsun was stressed.

It seemed that no matter what she did, stress would follow. It clung to her like fog on an excessively humid summer afternoon. She excelled in high school, but maintaining her grades while participating in extracurricular activities was stressful. Navigating the college application process with little to no support from her family was stressful. Everything that came with being in college—the classes, working several jobs, trying to have a social life—was stressful. Through it all, she tried to keep a smile on her face, tried to not burden others with her problems. She kept the stress to herself, and now she felt like she was going to combust.

“It’s fine, Yongsun. You can do this. This is what you wanted. It will all work out.” Talking to herself never actually worked. She would speak her words of affirmation, take a deep breath, feel calm for a moment, open her eyes, and get slapped in the face with the fact that none of her problems had vanished.

It was July. Classes started in August.

As the thoughts she aimed to keep at bay swarmed once again, Yongsun lifted herself off her bed. A deep sigh left her lips as she slid her bare feet into her fluffy bunny house slippers. Walking across the mahogany wood floors, she plopped herself into the black, plastic chair at her desk. “Okay,” she started, “let’s sort this out then we can eat. Sound like a plan? Its’s a plan. Ugh, I’m so strange sometimes.”

Reaching to her lower right, Yongsun pulled out her black, leather-clad journal from her bookbag. Combing through its tattered pages, she found an empty page, grabbed a black erasable pen from her pen holder, and got to work. In perfect cursive, she began writing:

Things to do for Grad School

• Pay enrollment deposit: $100
• Sign and email or fax letter of admission
• Pick classes
• FIND SOMEWHERE TO ING LIVE
• Loans?
• Research work-study options

This was depressing. Yongsun was stressed.

This was also what she wanted. She wanted to go to grad school, and here she was, going to grad school. It had been a week since she received her letter of acceptance, and she had yet to have a moment to fully enjoy it. There was just so much to do.

As she opened her laptop and pressed the power button, a haggard sigh escaped her chapped lips. The computer’s fan whirred to life, the sound of the overworked machine filling her silent bedroom. Two whacks attempted to get the machine to quiet down. It didn’t work. It never did. Yet another sigh escaped Yongsun, this time from annoyance. Accepting that she had at least another seven minutes before her computer was up and ready to go, she moseyed over to her bed, grabbed her cell phone from next to her pillow, her chapstick from her nighttable, and walked back to the uncomfortable desk chair. Unlocking her phone, she plopped into the seat while scrolling through her Instagram account.

It was a joke how unused her profile was. Her focus this past year was balancing work while preparing for graduate school. Before that—for as long as she could remember, really—her focus was school. She needed to do well in school to get into a good college. Once she got into college, she needed to make sure she was able to stay there. As such, she didn’t go out much. When she made time to hang out with the few friends that she had on campus, she was too absorbed in enjoying her time with them to focus on taking pictures of herself or anything else. To that, anyone viewing her Instagram would respond, “We can tell.” Her page sat in stark contrast to the posts she was now scrolling through. Her old classmates posted everything and anything.

If she were being honest, another reason she didn’t post much was because nothing Instagram-worthy usually happened. Her timeline was full of European vacations and wild nights out. The most exciting thing that happened this past year for Yongsun was curating an unbelievably fluid playlist for one of the men’s basketball games she had to work. A parent even came up to her afterwards and praised her for the wonderful selection of songs she had chosen throughout the game. That wasn’t really something one bragged about on social media. It wasn’t really something one bragged about in real life either.

“I need to do . . . things . . . more often. This is sad. You’re young, Yongsun. Act like it.”

What seemed like an eternity later, her computer had started up. Yongsun signed into her email. Hundreds of unread messages greeted her. She preferred this, though. The unread messages served as a reminder that she needed to read the emails and, indeed, every time she signed in, she was reminded. Whether she ever got around to actually reading the sales promotions she’d never use sent to her by boutiques she’d never purchase from was another story.

Finding and clicking on the emboldened name of the Program Director, red suddenly coated Yongsun’s cheeks. The email thread that the two had going was disgustingly long, but she had to make sure that all of her questions received answers. Reading his response to her most recent batch of questions, a bit of stress vanished from her shoulders. He had thankfully spelled out in great detail what the process would be for registering for classes. Most were required, so there was not much to worry about on that front. He would register her for the classes once she chose her one elective for the semester. Nice.

Quickly scanning her signed letter of admission, Yongsun attached the pdf file to the email containing her elective selection. She made sure to slip in yet another question, this one about work-study options. Once ‘send’ was hit, she felt another bit of the tension she’d been holding on to leave her body. Grabbing her cell phone from the desk, she kicked her bunny-slipper-clad feet onto her desk and dialed the number for the Bursar’s Office, immediately placing the call on speakerphone. As soon as the automated voice began talking, Yongsun interrupted, “Representative.”

“Would you like to speak to a representative?” the automated voice confirmed?

“Yes.”

“Okay, please hold. This call may be recorded for training and quality purposes.”

The smooth jazz hold music filled her room, replacing the whirring of her computer’s fan. As it did so, she updated her to-do list:

Things to do for Grad School

• Pay enrollment deposit: $100
• Sign and email or fax letter of admission
• Pick classes
• FIND SOMEWHERE TO ING LIVE
• Loans?
• Research work-study options

It was July. Classes started in August. Yongsun was stressed and strongly reconsidering this graduate school sh*t.