Saturday, May 22, 2010

Breakaway



It's been a long two years, and here I am done with half of my college career. It went by so fast, I felt like I moved in yesterday, yadda yadda yadda and all that jazz.
But I don't think I've been more ready to take a break from a place where I feel like my identity has become inextricable from my immediate environment. I want to know that I am a real, whole person outside of this tiny campus and not just a Purple Person who is only someone because he's a Williams student at Williams College. Does that make any sense? I think that it's just a convoluted way of saying that I'm ready to live a more fast-paced life for a while.

As I stand on the edge of breaking away from this campus, I feel like I've had such little time to reflect on all the incredibly positive benefits I've derived from my time here. The many long plane, train and taxi rides to come will be perfect for a little mulling, but I know for a fact now that there's nothing like stepping out onto the campus on balmy morning wearing purple short-shorts, a Goodrich soy dirty chai in hand, taking in the fresh dewy smell of the air, a scent I have yet to find anywhere outside north-east America or eastern Canada. I walk across quads excited by the smiles of people who have had, in one way or another, a profound effect on my sense of place and belonging.

Though I could walk through the corridors of my high school with similar confidence, my strides at Williams have been free of the blend of insecurity and pride that hounded me throughout my younger teenage years. And I have this comfortable, welcoming nest of a campus to thank for it.

But things have gotten a little too comfortable, to the point where I feel like I'm not being challenged to face the real world enough in the formative years when skills are supposed to be honed (hello, small elite New England liberal arts college, who'd-a-thunk?).

Williams has made me lose a lot of perspective.

I'm leaving with a lot of loose strings left untied. Pressing the "pause" button, I am going to take a break, come back and pick things up where I left off, but hopefully with a better capacity to deal with the issues that arise with clarity and rationality.

Maybe I'm asking too much from myself, but I've always lived life with goals. And I've defined the next. So I guess I might have meditated on the topic more than I think I have.

Alright. No more procrastination. It's time to get packing.

2 comments:

  1. I am not surprised that you feel you need to take the bigger next step. You've always been one that didn't settle and it makes sense that you need a bigger space :D You're destined to do amazing things :)

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  2. I love how you used a Kelly Clarkson song as inspiration for the title.

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