IKEA by Victoria

IKEA by Victoria - January 2022 Scholarship Essay

Building IKEA furniture is always an interesting experience; a mere six hours (and several profanities later,) a semi-functional “MALM” bed frame is now a reality. The journey from a few wooden planks and loose screws to a “fully functional” piece of furniture mirrors my emotions towards school.
Walking into that IKEA showroom, my enthusiasm was unmatched. I felt fully prepared: I had a full day ahead of me and a power drill! I already visualized my fully formed bed in its perfect, sunlit spot. But then, heavy pieces of compact cardboard, elementary instructions, and that one missing screw deflated me. By most standards, I was a well-rounded student: academically excellent, humanely driven, and physically mediocre. But shortly into my time at the educational ‘showroom,’ my ability to focus utterly disappeared, leaving me worn-out and unmotivated. The routine that I always thought was bearable turned into one that left me hyperventilating in the shower. I often found myself tired and lethargic; I was a machine living in a body that wasn’t mine to control. A simple list of definitions became unbearable. The temptation of being only one click away from turning myself off enticed me: one click, and my face would become pixels, one click and I would lose my voice.
The temptation to give up became louder than my motivation to keep going. The instructions were never-ending, the assignments were never finished. I remember sitting in my squeaky gaming chair on a cold December morning and struggling to stay awake at one in the afternoon. “Log onto Collegeboard and complete unit 2 MC, you guys can go if you want.” I left as soon as possible, doing the bare minimum, yet still dreading every excruciating moment. After I left class that day, I did nothing but lounge around and play too much Mario Kart. The act of going to the bathroom was tedious to me. My bed knew me well. The warmth from my blanket encouraged me to log onto a class in the same place I once dreamed of my future career. The mattress was molded to me, that divot on the right side was my safe space. Why would I leave? As I assembled the pieces, the discomfort intensified; the screw wouldn’t fit and my hands were blistering. I could see the screw desperately trying to break away, but lazily I continued anyway, until the compact cardboard eventually cracked in half. How had I become so comfortable with discomfort?
The frayed edges of what was supposed to be furniture stared back at me, hopelessly trying to find their broken partners. I opened the aromatic bottle of Gorilla glue and slathered it onto the splintery planks. Lacing a clamp, I sat on the pieces to clamp them together. The forty-five minutes passed by slowly. I frantically searched for spare nails and screws to reinforce the foundation, ultimately making it stronger than it was coming out of the box.
I could feel myself flipping through the pages, saddened for a wasted year, but excited that a new one was on the way. Untethered to the notion of being fine all of the time, I needed to be broken to be fixed. The act of repairing doesn’t have to be systematic: I didn’t have to be the static character in my own life, I was allowed to have dynamicity. Just as the IKEA instructions became a guiding recommendation rather than the shackles of expectation, I began to define myself, accepting that I was flawed, that I needed some gorilla glue and extra screws from time to time, and before I knew it the “MALM” bed frame was functional, maybe imperfect by the standards of the IKEA enterprise but flawless in the eyes of my eight Hello Kitty plushies and perfect for my reinvigorated body and brain.