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Tales from the Down Under: #2 Distances Left to Run

Trodding your ways through multitudes crowds of people can be overwhelming, a well-anticipated feeling of detachment whenever the first day of school unfolds. My dogged faith of self-assertion prevented me from feeling belittled, though. It is the relativity between the petite me and the elephantine them that truly created the pressure. I never believe the old saying of hiding yourself in a crowd or gently and oozily blend into it. I only felt myself embarrasingly conspicuous that I eventually forgot to buy me a bottle of much-needed water.

Even more conspicuous was my apparel, which constituted 'shabbily' of a T-shirt and jeans, in comparison and in constrast with what the majority wore, tees and shorts. The room therefore smelled like a brothel on a tropical island. The hoary and tottery lecturer on the dais thankfully saved the grace by reading Peter Rabbit in a most idiosyncratic way. This Nabokov-esque old lady veritably topped off the day as she stammered till the bell rang.

The biggest question and the most difficult task of the first day was how to feel and act like a sophomore while every inch of you was a perfect manifestation of an freshman callow bird. Whenever a writer exerts authorial insouciance to portray a specific character, the code for it is to use as less description as possible, then the mysticism surfaces. Hold your chin up and with a listless facial expression, that is how you blow trumpets in the parade.

A pair of jelly legs and occasional dehydration were somewhat the drawbacks of my first day. Without an upsetting stomach or joy-killing exhaustion, those drawbacks were laughably trivial. For the following days and weeks, my empty diary pages urges me to head down to dilligent work and to keep an unwavering fixation on my academic work.

For a tree can never bear abundant fruits without some painstaking efforts, but those painstaking efforts can hardly guarantee the abundance of fruits(as my English Department alluded to in our report cards.) Nevertheless, leaves grow heavy and barks stay strong when you put in your blood and sweat. And it eventually shakes the entire earth. For those who get easily alarmed at the aforementioned, the effect is only prophetic.

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