Bloom at Your Own Pace

Kate Kong, MA in Digital Studies '25

Sat in the middle of the main quad today instead of going back to my desk, my laptop still open to a half-finished essay draft. I’ve been writing my essays for days now. Words, frameworks, arguments—all blurring together into a gray, shapeless mess. I’d stared at the same paragraph for forty minutes this morning, deleting sentences only to type them back again. My eyes burned from staring at the screen, so I just… stopped. Grabbed my iced matcha latte, pushed open the library door, and took my coffee outside to sit down in the sun. 

And spring was just doing its thing. Quietly. No urgency. The blossom trees along the quad didn't rush. Pink and white, one petal at a time. The grass is still patchy from winter, but it's coming back. Slowly. Nobody's rushing it. I don’t know why that hit me so hard. Maybe it was the sun on my face. Maybe the smell of damp earth after days of library air. Maybe just the quiet — not the pressured kind, but the kind that lets your brain unclench for a second. 

Maybe because I’ve been measuring my own progress in deadlines and word counts. Every morning, I make a list: “Finish 500 words,” “Edit the introduction,” “Outline the third argument”—and every night, I berate myself for not checking every box, for falling a little short. I’ve been in such a hurry to “finish,” to “succeed,” to cross things off my to-do list that I’ve forgotten that growth—real growth—has always had its own rhythm.  

You can’t pull a plant out of the soil to make it grow faster; you can’t rush a bud to bloom before it’s ready. All you can do is water it, give it light, and let it be. And yet, I’ve been yanking at my own roots, trying to force myself to move faster, to be further along, to be “done” with the messy, in-between part. 

I’m still figuring things out. Still mid-essay, mid-everything. My draft is still messy, my arguments still need work, and the deadline is still looming. But sitting in that quad, in that sun, with a warm coffee in my hand and petals on my lap, I think I’m okay with that. I’m okay with the in-between, with the slow progress, with the fact that I don’t have it all figured out yet. It’s okay to pause, to breathe, to let myself grow at my own pace—even if it doesn’t match the timeline I’ve set for myself. 

Spring doesn’t ask permission to take its time. It doesn’t apologize for blooming slowly, for growing steadily, for being exactly where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. Maybe I don’t have to either. Maybe the best thing I can do right now is keep showing up—for the essay, for myself—and trust that the growth will come, in its own time, in its own way. I took a sip of my coffee, still warm, and watched another petal fall. Today, that was enough.