Back to School (But Not Really)

Yesterday my college roommate and I took an afternoon trip up to our alma mater, Kenyon College in rural central Ohio. It was a short visit—we were only on campus for a matter of five hours—but it was an instructive one as well. Here are some thoughts:

1.     Taking the familiar drive up the hill to campus, all of the cues told me I was going back to school, but at the same time I knew that that wasn't the case. Being there—eating in Peirce Dining Hall, sitting out on a bench on Middle Path outside Ascension, seeing all the familiar faces (and the unfamiliar as well)—it all felt so normal and, at the same time, so incredibly strange. I felt as though I was of Kenyon, but no longer a part of Kenyon, if that makes sense. A few times during the visit I was introduced to new people, and I found myself qualifying my greeting, “Hi, I’m Katie, I don’t go here anymore.” And, to be honest, saying it helped make it true.

2.     Kenyon really is still there! It didn’t dematerialize like Brigadoon the moment I left campus. And there’s something comforting about that, about knowing that, while I’m off in Frankfurt doing things that are entirely new to me, people in Gambier, Ohio will still be doing pretty much the same things they did when I lived there: students will put off writing papers and make late night Market runs and engage in “whose tastes in music/film/literature are more obscure” contests instead; professors will run around looking harried; visiting students will be herded about in flocks, clutching their conspicuous Visiting Student folders and looking astonished by everything. Sitting outside the Village Inn, watching a small contingent of first-year girls march south on Middle Path toward Kenyon’s annual first-weekend Greek bash, the Highlighter Party, I felt like an elder-statesman expert on Kenyon life: I was one of those freshman girls once, I made the mistakes they’re going to make, and the discoveries as well. Kenyon worked its magic on me, and I’m a different person now than I was then. And now I’m going to go off and become a different person yet again.

3. Alongside all of the sameness: there should be some kind of law stipulating that schools are forbidden from making any dramatic changes for at least two years after I leave. The year after I graduated from high school, my school opened a new wing; now, the year after I graduated from Kenyon, the president is stepping down, the apartment I lived in has been demolished, and a campus institution, a cafe called Middle Ground, has closed its doors and been replaced by a wildly inferior joint called Wiggin Street Coffee. I approve of none of this. I’m the one who’s supposed to go off and change; Kenyon is supposed to remain exactly as I left it.
4. While sitting in Wiggin Street Coffee (or Impostor Middle Ground, as I like to call it-- though apparently the popular name among returning students is "Wiggle Ground") waiting to meet my professor for coffee, I eavesdropped on maybe the most stereotypical college conversation ever. A film was referred to as "Kafka-esque"; a sophomore girl lamented being mistaken for a first year; there was an overabundance of plaid and eighties-style mustaches. Five minutes of covertly listening in on this from a neighboring booth reminded me that I really am ready to not be a college student anymore.
5. Most importantly though, after talking with my professor and a couple of friends who just returned from studying abroad in Germany, I'm definitely excited to go and be young and have wild adventures in Europe. Someday down the road, I want to be the person sitting in a bar with her friends, narrating all of the crazy things that happened to her during the year she lived in Frankfurt. I want to collect a healthy arsenal of stories that begin "The time when..." or "The night with the..." or "That weekend we were in..." But one thing that's clear to me after talking to my friends is that these kinds of adventures don't just happen to people-- not often enough, anyway. You have to seek them out, or at least be willing to put yourself in situations where the unexpected, unusual, incredible might occur. Given that the flight portion of my fight-or-flight response is somewhat over-developed, this might be a challenge for me. Presented with a new and maybe uncomfortable scenario, it’s going to take some significant will power to force myself to ride things out rather than immediately run for the door. This will get easier with time, of course, as will many things about my move to Germany. “It will get easier” has been a constant refrain in conversations I’ve had lately. At the same time, I think I’m ready for a little bit of hard. Then again, I’m sure there will be moments when that is not the case-- when I’m lonely and scared-- and I’ll be willing to give anything to go back and be a student at Kenyon again, with the future safely ahead of me.