So Crapgivers, it’s that time of year again. Back to School! If you’re a little kid, you excitedly make a trip to Gap Kids with your mom, eagerly trying on new “school shoes”, buying fun, sparkly, supplies, and getting ready to go to back to see your favorite teacher. You know, the one who has the class guinea pig, allows snack ANYTIME of the day, and rarely gives homework (In ten years, you will be looking for the same qualities in a college professor, this I can promise you). You get on the bus, excited to learn the new curse word of the year. School is fun!

Now flash forward those ten years.

Back to college. You are excited to see your friends, decorate your new place, spend the first weekend enjoying the fun parts of college, blissfully unaware of the hell you are about to endure come tomorrow morning.

Monday comes. You search the ends of the earth for that LITERAL NONEXISTENT text book Professor Doctor Annoying Voice Whatsherface REQUIRES by 8am on Monday morning. You finally find it on Amazon, triumphantly hit “place my order”, excited you went the extra mile with that two day shipping (showoff), only to track the package and read “Will ship in approximately six days”. Let’s not even get started on that dwindling bank account.*cue tears*

So yeah, School is fun!

So, since the back to school festivities are what I’ve been enduring the last week or so, I decided to share my first writing assignment from my Creative Writing class. The topic was a “This I Believe” essay. If you don’t know what that is, look it up. I am not a personal encyclopedia.

In other words, I’ve been too busy with school, late nights and napping for time to write, so this is what you’re going to get. Enjoy. Or don’t. By now you know I don’t give a crap.

This I Believe Essay:

A light breeze brushed my skin as my polish chipped toes waded in the warm August water. In the background, only the holler of seagulls, rush of the tides, and faint laughter of children running from the waves. I took the salt air into my lungs and closed my eyes, taking in the smells and sounds. The sky illuminated pink and orange, and the sun dipped over the horizon. Another perfect sunset over the Atlantic, another perfect beach day. This was everything I believed summer should be; this was my paradise.

I believe in the ocean.

I believe in the waning of the tides and the feeling of salt and sunscreen caked on your body like paper mache. I believe in biting into a turkey sandwich, sandy hands diving into the potato chips, and cracking a coca-cola. I believe in tirelessly turning the worn pagers of your favorite summer read as the approaching high tide threatens your chair. I believe in diving into the water, no matter how cold, dodging fish on the ocean floor. I believe that a perfect, untouched shell or weathered piece of sea glass in your pocket, means that you had a good day.

I believe the ocean is the most beautiful thing on the planet. A summer day at the Jersey Shore brings millions of people together, just like how sipping a pina colada in the Caribbean can make just about anyone blissful.

I believe in the ocean.

I believe in sharks looming in the depths of the water, as swimmers are blissfully unaware. I have seen the effects of a brutal summer storm when the ocean gets angry. I have have read horrible stories in the news of people who fought rip currents, only for the rip current to win. I believe that pollution and problems threaten beautiful sea creatures and the stability of the ocean, but I also believe that the ocean is strong enough to fight back. From growing up at the beach, I have witnessed the force, current, and unpredictability the ocean possesses. You can never be too careful.

And so the ocean is my paradise. The beautiful, treacherous ocean. Something that can bring joy to anyone, whether its through swimming, fishing, boating, or just admiring, but can also be so treacherous. But that is the beauty of the ocean. A body of water, covering just about most of the earth, with depths so deep science has yet to even explore them. To me, the ocean is another world. It is astounding, radiant, and pure, and it is a force to be reckoned with. I am amazed that something so beautiful, can also be so dangerous. The ocean is what unites the world physically, but also unites so many people emotionally. The ocean is what brings the world together, and this I strongly believe.

So I’m going to pack up my beach chair and follow the sound of the gulls, because no matter what time of year, I always believe that the sea is calling.