College: Living, Laughing and Learning

peace, punch, captain crunch!

It’s entirely difficult to find your place in a completely foreign world. It’s difficult. I find myself fascinated by the first-years’ first week at Vanderbilt. So many different people; so many different worlds… COLLIDE. It’s an extremely rare, beautiful, exquisite phenomenon. The same journey to finding oneself lived out by 1570 people. It’s completely and utterly simple: simply life.

As I watch my first-year VUceptees and residents, I feel energized, alive. The life they have zaps me into me. As I influence and mold them, I am molded. I am charmed by their subtle ways; I am grateful for their acknowledgement and love. As they enter their journey to test their integrity, character, and substance, I catch myself entering the same journey- just a second year.

Ever been in a situation where you want to do something to make you feel accepted and cool, yet you know it is against your gut feeling whether to do it or not? It’s sad that still in certain conversations or situations, I still feel that way, and I still don’t know if I can gather the strength either to resist in a humble way or to change my habits… perhaps, change is the hardest thing. I am afraid of changing into someone I won’t recognize. I fear for an ambiguous identity.

While first year students are having the times of their lives, I see myself dancing, laughing, having fun and just living- living the life I have always dreamed of… to be able to positively influence people, students, as well as have fun with people with common interests. That was what I felt with my fellow VUceptors and RA staff- great people; like-minded people. Yet, even as a deep, infectious delight is instilled in me as I recognize these connections made, there is a part of me that houses an insecurity.

I never dreamed to be able to have such an intense happiness, to be accepted unofficially as an upperclassmen. An upperclassmen in the sense that there is no longer an invisible first-year division between me and the rest of the school.

Is it good or bad when older students treat me just like them? Does it make me seem less innocent? Does it make it seem more okay to put me in harder situations, to be asked harder questions, and to be expected to make harder decisions- this time in front of people deemed friends- people who claim to know you? Is there a price to be cool? Maybe all along, it would have been better to have stayed a reticent caterpillar instead of sprouting my wings into a social butterfly.

Who am I? What am I about? What will be my legacy here at Vanderbilt? What will I carry with me?

All those questions waiting to be answered. Rich floods of thoughts stream through my head. As I contemplate all of these confusing thoughts, I continue to plow through my doubts, fears, worries. As I face these questions, I see one thing that stands out: my integrity… is it simply so easy to lose your integrity? Or has integrity been an illusion all along, a quality defined by what everyone else thinks of you? I want to be sure about my answer to this plaguing question. I want to be firm. Yet, it’s difficult because of the natural need for human acceptance and affection- good things that may make you doubt yourself.

I hope that this year I will be able to stand firm in my integrity and not let a part of myself down. I hope to keep the love, joy, and laughter that radiates within my soul, reflecting the excitement of my residents and VUceptees. I hope to let real people find out the real me as I continue on my very tangible journey of discovery.

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something completely great.”
-Willa Cather

And that’s why I’m so happy right now:  I am immersed in something completely great.