I entered my friends Ben and Jelz’s room and swung the door shut behind me, my hood up and my head spinning.

My friend Josh looked away from Black Ops 4 for a second and said, “Noah, you look like the Punisher.”

“Josh, what’s the Breaking Bad episode where everything goes sideways for Walter? Was it ‘Ozymandias’?”

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

“Today is ‘Ozymandias’.”

I never got drunk in Spain, but I think I got a little drunk off the experience. That’s the only plausible explanation for why I thought taking 16 credits in the spring would be a good idea.

As for running for Student Senate during the sweatiest semester I’ve had at Calvin, I have no explanation.

People asked me why I was running for Senate during campaign week. My stock response was that I didn’t want to be an armchair critic, and if I had problems with Calvin (which I do) becoming a senator would be the most direct method of dealing with them. But that wasn’t the only reason.

Maybe it was because a few of my mentors had suggested the circle of friends that would come from a club or student org would be healthy. Maybe it was because a few of my friends were on Senate, and working with them sounded fun. Maybe it was because student government would be killer for my LinkedIn page. Maybe having something as time-consuming as being a senator would be the kick in the pants I needed to get my life in order. Maybe it was a little of all those things. Whatever it was, I ran.

If you couldn’t tell by now, I didn’t make it.

I think I went through a couple of stages following the announcement of the election results.

Stage 1: Acceptance. The person with the most votes didn’t surprise me; she was an RA and an international relations major, so she had an entire dorm behind her along with a major that by its nature gave her political acumen.

Stage 2: Indignation. That came from the second winner and first runner-up. Two people made it to senate through the initial election; the second winner was knocked out with an ear infection for most of the campaign week. The person who came in third was a surprise; I didn’t even know she was running until the night before results were announced. After some snooping, I found out why: because she hadn’t campaigned. Which is where the indignation came in: Are you telling me I lost to someone who couldn’t campaign and someone who didn’t campaign? How little trust do people have in me?!

Granted, there were other people who had beat me–I came in sixth–but those two results really got under my skin.

Stage 3: Discouragement. I was not in Stage 3 when I burst into Ben and Jelz’s room asking about Breaking Bad episodes. That came the week after.

I’m confessing to the world: I almost had a date.

I asked one of my friends if she wanted to get Bob Evans on a Monday where we didn’t have class. And she agreed.

Then things came up over the weekend, and she decided to call it off, and told me she didn’t feel the same way.

Which is where I ended up: sitting off in a corner, seriously considering whether I was going to fail two of my classes, not a senator, and trying to figure out what the phrasing for getting rejected after a yes is. (Conclusion: asking out=shooting your shot, rejection=missing, my situation=ricochet…or something.)

Which leads into Stage 4.

Stage 4: Introspection. After the emo stuff had gone on for long enough, I started thinking.

I’ve taken some serious L’s this year. What I’ve mentioned is an incomplete list, but they’re the big things. As I thought through it, I started to see something resembling the bright side. I was on the come up in my struggle classes (or at least, it felt like it), so those weren’t as much of concerns as they had been a few weeks before. Being on next year’s Senate might be a bust, but I got my name out there. I took a risk, something I feel I don’t do often enough, and got good information that could be used for a future shot at Senate. I got 445 votes, and proof of something I sometimes have a hard time believing: that there are people in my corner.

As for getting shot down? Rejection SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS (did I mention it sucks?), but as punches to the soul go, this was more of an angry toddler punch than a prizefighter punch. This friend, who I’m purposely leaving unnamed, named not leading me on as her reason for calling it off, so yay to not getting strung along. And she set the tone: things are only as awkward as you make them, and there’s been a minimum of awkwardness between the two of us.

Stage 5: Turning the Phrase I’d Been Muttering to Myself on Its Head. Which brings me back to Ben and Jelz’s room, asking about the titles of Breaking Bad episodes.

The episode title comes from “Ozymandias”, a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The narrator meets a man who stumbled on the ruins of a kingdom while wandering through the desert. On the pedestal of a statue of the king are these words:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

I found myself muttering those words to myself a lot as the school year wound to a close.

I look upon my works.

But I don’t think I’m going to despair.