Waiting on the day
I never thought I would become a teacher in my alma mater. Considering how I fared as a student a decade ago, that old uncertainty has somehow found its way back to me. Some of my students have even confided in me about how to navigate that same uncertainty. It is the feeling of having poured everything into a project, finally completing it, only to sit and wait for the bell to ring. “Have I done enough? Will I pass the final assessment?” the student version of me would ask.
That same feeling has emerged again, and it feels painfully familiar.
It is strange how we often remember the feelings surrounding an event more vividly than the event itself. When I look back on the beginning of the year, I remember how cool everything felt. Much of December’s quietness spills into January and February. For students and teachers alike, December is another kind of summer—a pause that invites us to listen to ourselves before stepping into a new year.
As John Mayer sings in the closing track of his album Room for Squares, “And come January, we’re frozen inside making new resolutions a hundred times.” I sometimes wonder how many of those resolutions have survived because June already marks the halfway point of the year.
Out of curiosity, I came across an article discussing January and learned about something called Quitter’s Day. I later heard Fr. Mike Schmitz speak about it briefly through the Hallow app. By its very name, Quitter’s Day refers to the point when many people abandon the promises they made at the beginning of the year. It usually falls on the second Friday of January. There is something ironic about how quickly aspirations can fade into forgotten dreams—sometimes only a few weeks after they were made.
Perhaps Quitter’s Day feels unsettling because it reveals a difficult truth about ourselves. The battlefield is often found within the heart. We are tempted or vengeful to see ourselves as main characters thrown into the wasteland armed with little more than a crowbar and a vague sense of purpose while someone shouts, “Go save the world!”. And then, game over.
Somehow, Quitter’s Day reminds us that enthusiasm is strongest when the road ahead appears manageable. The difficulty begins when our aspirations get a roadblock with reality. A few failed plans, a surprise setback, a disappointing grade, or simply the exhaustion of carrying responsibilities day after day can make us question whether our resolutions were worth making at all.
It sucks sometimes.
The most difficult consequence of failure is often disappointment. The Spanish philosopher Julián Marías describes disappointment as a form of depersonalization. In disappointment, the person seems to disappear. It is like seeing someone abandon the routines that once defined them, only to find them curled up in bed, motionless and withdrawn. It is as though they have lost themselves to themselves. Their authenticity undergoes a private trial. For a moment, it feels like the end of the world, even if time and space eventually reveal that it is not.
Whenever a friend or family member feels disappointed, our first instinct is often to solve the problem for them. Yet disappointment is not a mathematical equation waiting for an immediate and instant solution. Sometimes people simply need room to sit with themselves. Sometimes they need someone willing to sit beside them while emotions spill out in ways that words can barely contain. Not every wound requires treatment. Some require presence.
Connecting to my colleague Ms. Lentija’s article, “Left on seen,” presence means more than we often realize when disappointment clouds a person’s life. There are burdens that no friend, parent, teacher, or mentor can completely carry for another. Yet simply being there can lighten the load.
This is perhaps why C.S. Lewis begins A Grief Observed with the surprising yet simple confession: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” At first glance, grief and fear seem like distant cousins. One mourns what has been lost; the other trembles before what may come. Yet both share a common feature: they leave us feeling displaced within our own lives.
Disappointment often feels the same way.
It is not merely sadness over a failed plan. It is the unsettling realization that reality has refused to cooperate with the story we wrote for ourselves. We expected a scholarship, a promotion, a passing mark, a repaired relationship, or simply a better version of ourselves by now. Instead, we are confronted by our limitations. The future suddenly appears less certain than it did only a few months ago.
And perhaps that is why June feels different from January.
January is filled with declarations.
June is filled with evidence.
By June, students have completed their classes and begun preparing for the midyear term—or, if fortune has smiled upon them, are enjoying a well-deserved summer break. Teachers know which lessons succeeded and which ones fell flat. Organizations have learned whether their plans were realistic. Offices have discovered that some goals are far more difficult to achieve than they initially imagined.
The excitement of beginning has given way to the more demanding task of persevering.
Yet, there is something admirable about reaching the middle of the year. To arrive here is to have survived disappointments, deadlines, misunderstandings, and moments of self-doubt. We may not be where we hoped to be in January, but we are no longer who we were then either.
As I walk through the same hallways where I once worried about essays and oral examinations, I am reminded that uncertainty is not something we outgrow. Students carry it. Teachers carry it. Administrators carry it. Every guard and janitor carries it.
What changes is not the uncertainty itself, but our willingness to face it together.
Every day, students encourage one another through difficult projects, tsundere crushes, and terror professors. Faculty members support colleagues by sharing advice, helping one another survive the checking season, and combining three electric fans when the air-conditioning decides to surrender. Staff members actively and patiently perform the work that allows everyone else to succeed.
These acts may seem ordinary, but they form the invisible threads, the silver lining that holds a community together.
My mentor once shared a line from Lorenzo Scupoli’s The Spiritual Combat: “For if you cannot deal rightly with yourself, what marvel is it if others do not deal rightly with you?”
Over the years, I have realized how easy it is to blame others for my misfortunes while overlooking the work I must first do within myself. Disappointment and negativity spread easily. They can infect a classroom, an office, even friendship.
Hope requires more courage.
So does gratitude.
It takes effort to notice the small victories that gently illuminate the road ahead. It also takes effort just to say thanks to someone who helped you despite having a bad day. Perhaps this is where faith enters the picture. We must be humble enough to accept that not everything unfolds according to our plans. Sometimes we are called to trust that there is meaning even in setbacks, and purpose even in uncertainty just like Hamlet when he declared to Horatio, “There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow”.
After all, many of us would not have made it this far without Him.
If January belongs to resolutions, perhaps June belongs to those who are still waiting on the day. The year is far from over. There is still time to fail, to learn, to begin again, and to surprise ourselves.
More importantly, there is still time to help one another carry the weight of the journey.
And to my students who have entrusted me with their worries and uncertainties, I hope you find the little nuggets of wisdom here something worth reflecting upon and worth loving all the way.
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