This is Ottavia Paluch and you’re reading Things You Otter Know.
Obviously Sea Otter September does not exist. YET.
(Just saying, if enough of you read this and get the ball rolling, I could get a WWF sponsorship!)
September is always a very transitional time of year for me. Probably yours too, if you’re one of the many young people who reads this Substack. You know summer’s over when the Staples commercials have kicked into high gear and your nose no longer works because you keep sniffing your watermelon-scented magic markers.
I’m actually writing to you today because in a few hours I am officially starting my sophomore year of university, and I fear a sophomore slump is imminent. Good luck to any other Otters out there starting school again. I also know a few people starting internships and co-ops pretty shortly—good luck to y’all as well!
I hope that, if anything, this Substack can let you take your mind off things, even just for a few minutes a week.
As the saying goes, life is hard but Otters are very soft.
September is a vibe. September means it’s Virgo season. It means all the A-listers are gonna start dropping albums and that your next favourite movie is getting premiering at TIFF. It means all your fave TV shows not named Succession are back with new episodes. I mean. In a Bob Iger-less world, they would be.
And it marks the start of fall. I love fall! Autumn, even. My favourite season. Not too hot and not too cold. So full of colour and life and also dead leaves.
It’s also my birthday month! In a week I turn 20. (Let it be known that I struggled to type out that sentence.) I will probably have some longer thoughts on all of this later but I am so not looking forward to kicking the teen out of my age.
If you take the birthday stuff out of the equation then I think September would be a god tier month. There is something about it that brings out this almost irrational excitement in me. This time last year I had no idea what I was in for. I had started on an absolute high, having seen My Chemical Freaking Romance live with two of my closest friends, and then my first year of university was such a blur, and all the volunteering stuff was so insane and life-altering. I was expecting a much chiller, transitional year and it was so not chill.
I’m visually impaired in real life as you probably know but I think this is totally the time of year to wear rose-coloured glasses. Personally, I’ve dreamed of being an English major at the University of Toronto since I was a kid and literally today that dream officially comes true! Ridiculousness.
So much of this month for me has also always been spent reflecting on how far I’ve come and also where I want to go. I have 3 years left in my undergraduate degree at one of if not the best school in Canada. So I want to make the most of the resources and opportunities and people here before I have to graduate and get some stupid office job.
And yeah my classes kinda suck this semester (three courses just on literature from 45 billion B.C.) but I’m so stoked to work with this fancy poet prof in this year-long creative writing workshop on campus that I somehow got into. I’ve been writing almost as many poems in the last two months than I have in the last two years combined and I cannot wait for my peers to tear these new suckers of mine to shreds.
(I was telling Jess that if this fancy poet prof takes a liking to me then it’s over for everyone and she said something like “yeah I think it’s gonna be over for everyone.” Will update later if her prophecy comes true.)
And then outside of classes I can’t wait to catch up on stuff with my friends from 1st year who were all off in the summer doing wonderful things while I cried in a library study carrel over my Astronomy 101 course.
There are also students (both here in Mississauga and then in Toronto and also the surrounding areas) that I’ve been texting on and off and with whom I cannot wait to crack jokes while sipping ridiculously expensive matcha lattes or whatever it is the Cool Youths™️ drink.
Actually, today there is legit a giant clubs fair all the way down the quite long St. George Street. So I’m going. I am absolutely willing to tolerate the chaos and sweatiness of it1 in exchange for new best friends and an actual social life.
And in general I’m just excited to catch up with my friends from 1st year and join new clubs and try new things and spend more time in Toronto and put whatever money I haven’t spent on tuition towards small concerts and incredible pizza. (I’m not a partier, so this is my most extroverted idea of fun.)
Other than that I’m not going to make predictions here and say oh, I wanna do this specific thing and I’m gonna manifest some outlandish goal. I definitely have some general ambitions but overall I think I’ll try to take things as they come. To hold onto the sense of naïveté2 that surrounds this wonderful month (and what’s left of my teens!) for as long as I can. I don’t ever want to lose my sense of curiosity and imagination. They sound like buzzwords but they’re very important to me. It’s this part of my limited personality that the people I love most love about me the most and that I therefore never want to stop cultivating.
So here’s to Sea Otter September! To growing new roots and chewing on sticks in our beautifully constructed little dams!! WOO!!!
🦦 —O— 🦦
it’s like 91 Fahrenheit today in Toronto. You should be SO thankful that I bothered to convert that for you.
originally spelled as “nativity” (as in, like, tiny porcelain Jesus) until Google corrected me.