The week before spring break, I nestled in my little corner on the second floor of McKeldin Library. With a swordsman’s defiance, I jabbed the sign-out button of my daily companions: Gmail, Facebook and Twitter.

It was time to face the books.

Such plans, it seems, are doomed for failure. A notification flags up, your cell buzzes or the nearest spot on the wall demands your undivided attention and you sit, hand on chin, pondering reflectively.

In this instance, however, no such distraction came – only disaster. There was a spider.

Anyone who knows me the slightest bit understands spiders are my greatest undoing. When faced with stink bugs at home, I pay my 5-year-old sister (who is also afraid of spiders) to contain the creature by placing a plastic cup on it until bug patrol – my father – arrives.

You will thus understand that it took a great deal of self-discipline to avoid jumping up on the desk and screaming for help at the top of my lungs.

Running away was impossible. I could not leave my books behind, nor could I whisk up a tissue and jab at the eight-legged beast – smashing a spider is only so effective when you’ve got one hand over your eyes, head turned away and fingers trembling. So I decided to wait it out. Every 10 seconds or so, I would peek over my pages to get its latest location.

Ten minutes later, it was still there, silent and motionless, its beady eyes locked onto mine. I decided it must be dead (and I was safe).

But then I looked up and it was gone.

In that moment, I understood one of the greatest anomalies of fear. What is far more cumbersome than the presence of things we fear is when they disappear. The unseen and the unknown are forces clouded in a veil of darkness. Their presence is reassurance, their disappearance is a measure of uncertainty.

I panicked when the spider disappeared. I looked in my backpack, shuffled through my papers and looked under the chair (because spiders can lift 100-plus pound objects). I mistook the tassels of my scarf as the spider and swatted at myself repeatedly.

But for how long? Such meandering in the lands of darkness where worries may cut you down at any corner, under any page ruffle, has to end somewhere. And it did. After hours of studying, I forgot the spider, packed up my belongings and left.

That night, I returned to my home and opened my backpack. I reached inside for my cushioned pen, feeling its unnaturally soft padding, and wrote. Suddenly a black, furry little thing nestled on its edge caught my eye. I had finally found the spider.

We all have our little spiders, the hairy, scary things that make you cringe: The uncertainty of post-graduation, the questions surrounding job security, the hesitancy regarding whether you circled the right answer to those three multiple-choice questions you teeter-tottered on or the fear of leaving your umbrella in your dorm on a day when unexpected rains come.

To revel in the uncertainty of a spider’s absence is to wait for cloudiness on a sunny day, to live the good days knowing they will give way to the bad. Where did it go? What will come next? Will we be prepared when that time comes? Such questions can suspend you in time and space. But a 10-second peek to see if what you fear has finally gone is not the answer.

Instead, pack your belongings – your dreams and aspirations – and move on. Reach for what you desire and as you do, you may learn you have been backpacking you fears alongside your dreams all along.

Worry can indeed give a small thing a big shadow.

Fatimah Waseem is a freshman neurobiology and physiology and journalism major. She can be reached at waseem@umdbk.com.