It's been a semester and a half now here in Boston. I've learned the hard way about strange grading schemes, hard-to-comprehend teaching fellows, and fishing for quarters to do laundry. I've also met some truly amazing people I wouldn't have found otherwise. People who stretch me, comfort me, and challenge me to be who I am as best I can.
One of my former teachers asked me to come back for her class over spring break to speak with her students. She said it will be an open question/answer format and I can talk about whatever I like, within reason. Which left me with this question: where do I start? What can I possibly say to a bunch of sophomores and some high school juniors about what it's been like to search for colleges, travel across the country, and live in a huge city with thousands of other students?
I'll start with a memory.
Summer, 2008. The horrors of 8th grade at a brand-new middle school were behind me; my parents' fresh divorce was ahead of me. I faced a new high school with practically no friends to meet me there. It was hot. I was bored.
What I had: a church community. A family that loved me. Brothers I wouldn't trade for the world. Books to read. New music to listen to. Friendship I was only beginning to appreciate. And a dream that one day I would return to the New England I loved and pined for. I promised myself I would, that hot summer before my freshman year of high school.
4 years passed and so much changed. I moved from house to house as the divorce settled down. I fell in with different groups at school as I learned who I was. I flirted with joining the military. I bowled as a Rebel. I went to England and Scotland and remembered who my god was. I went to two wonderful proms. I got a car and a job. I took nine AP courses over the course of three years and learned my academic limits. Back in Connecticut, my friends were fighting, falling out, meeting people I had never heard of, growing up apart from me just as I did them. But my dream was the same. My picture of New England, however naive, was the same.
So when the college selection process began, I didn't consider any schools within 500 miles of Franklin. Tennessee, I was sure, was not really home. New England was home. I shot for Ivy; when that didn't work, Boston University stepped up with an incomparable aid package, and before I knew it I was signing my name and my parents were depositing the first check.
My first weekend in college was the wake-up call. So many of my floormates were from the area and already knew people they could hang out with; if not that, they had made friends at orientation and the first-year service project I couldn't attend. I spent a lot of time in my room wondering if my choice was right and realizing the finality of being 1,000 miles away from a place I had grown to love, plus my family and friends.
Since then, I have come to enjoy my time at BU, but it isn't without surprises and struggles. Being one among 16,000 undergraduates makes me feel faceless from time to time, but I need only to remember that the people I care about know me, and I can find comfort. School administration can, at times, seem blind to the needs and problems of the community, but then, theirs is a daunting task, and changes can't happen at the speed of light.
Most importantly, I have learned balance. I know the value of my home better than ever now, and missing it daily only makes it sweeter when I'm back again. I've learned when to work and when to play, even if I don't get it right all the time.
When I made the promise to myself almost 5 years ago, I never thought I would end up where I am today. I have not found the place I left in 2007. It surely disappeared the moment I pulled out of my driveway. Its memory is preserved, but I know better now: a dream doesn't have to age as you do, but in aging you are already changing what the dream will be like when you get it, if you do. It may not be what you expected, but at least you finally made it.
