Flavors of Life: A Junior Self-Portrait Illustration by Stella Ge (2013)

In my essay, I refer to my anxiety for the future, and feeling like I am in a rush to discover who I am. I talk about college, not knowing what I’m going to major in, or even the type of person I’m going to become. I’m scared of the uncertainty that the future holds, and how the fear of not knowing what I’m going to get is a fact that I find hard to accept. For me, it’s sometimes hard to take life as it comes, because I constantly feel like I need to know what will happen next.

My illustration is a play off the quote ''life is a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get'', reflecting my sentiments regarding the future and what it entails. In this piece, I have illustrated a box of chocolates along with a list of flavors of chocolate that the box contains, each representing a possibility in life. It’s impossible to tell which flavor each chocolate is, analogous to how we never know what life will throw at us next. This is why I put the flavors on a separate list, not on the chocolates themselves, because when we choose which chocolate to eat, we don’t know how it might taste. Similarly, in life, we don’t know what obstacles will be thrown our way when we choose to take a certain path. But in the end, I know that I must embrace the uncertainty and enjoy the chocolates (and life!) while they last.