I went home recently for the weekend and had a grand time visiting hometown haunts and stuffing my face with home-cooked food. As a college student ready to throw herself into the throes of finals week, there is nothing like a visit home to provide a perfect relaxation boost — as well as a motivation boost. When family members start tentatively asking about grades, and you remember how hard they might have worked to afford to give you this stellar college education and the ability to go for your dreams, I personally rediscover a great motivating force to settling down in the library for a long haul of studying.
But aside from that, I also relived a few childhood moments over my weekend home while cleaning and reorganizing my room. In the process, I unearthed a treasure trove of teenage Sally’s thoughts, emotions, trials and tribulations in my old diaries.
I read “Harriet the Spy” in middle school and was immediately inspired by Harriet’s extreme dedication to her notebook. “Harriet The Spy” is about a girl who copes with a lot in middle school — friendship betrayal, family drama and the loss of a nanny who had been her constant companion since infancy. For anyone wanting to dive into some children’s lit that is a cut above the rest, I highly recommend it. Let’s give a cheer for young adult literature!
I wanted to be like Harriet: a girl who writes anything and everything down in a notebook; a hidden window into her writing soul. So, I started a diary.
I kept up this diary pretty well throughout middle school, when the clique-y friend drama was thick and juicy and I had just discovered that boys were, like, kind of a big deal. There was plenty of emotional material to scribble down and then mark very firmly in red pen as, “SECRET. SALLY’S EYES ONLY. OR ELSE.”
Diary-keeping was harder in high school, when I was trying to be “cool,” “hip” and “adult,” and suddenly my purple fur-lined tome bursting with pre-teen woes from middle school seemed very immature. In college, it is even harder to keep up the practice of recording my daily activities and emotional thoughts, even though, hopefully, there is more to talk about nowadays than whether my crush might have looked at me in gym class. I’ve had family members who have systematically recorded their thoughts on every day of their adult life so far, which seems terribly impressive.
For a while in college, I thought that taking the time out of my day to write down my thoughts was selfish. There is always schoolwork that needs doing, forms that need signing or Instagram posts that need liking. There is always an internship I should be applying for: How on earth can I justify writing about my day and my emotional thoughts to myself? Don’t I already know them? What’s the point?
But keeping a diary is about more than patting yourself on the back for keeping your life together every day. A diary is a place that is, traditionally at least, secret. No one is going to view your diary as a Snapchat story, and no one is going to like your diary on Twitter. In a world constantly bombarded by people viewing and being part of other people’s lives through social media, a diary is a singular private entity. Even though that might make it boring at first, it also lends a freedom to you, as its creator.
It’s also nice to have a diary as a way to remember and record your thoughts and growth over the year. Look back on yourself in your memories, and things might be blurry, but with a diary, the act of self-reflection and evaluation becomes second nature, and the past can be seen with more clarity.
Many of the greatest writers of our time have been big diary-keepers, which also definitely makes me more excited to try my hand at it again, if I’m being honest.
We all need a little time to relax and reflect on ourselves if we want to stay sane, especially right before finals week. Perhaps a diary, now an uncommon form of expression, could be a perfect way to get started.
Sally Greider is a UF English and public relations junior. Her column usually appears on Wednesdays.
