Ihad always felt that I hadn’t changed or become a brand new person. I’d never felt that I was completely different than I was before. Instead, I always had felt that I’d grown into myself, become more of who I always wanted to be. As a child, I had these dreams of traveling and expeditions and writing and photography and of making promises to myself to go out and explore and do something. In high school I worked hard, damn hard, and woke up the morning of my graduation with the most inexplicable sense of accomplishment and pride. I hadn’t expected it – I’d really expected graduation morning to be underwhelming, just another ceremony on another day. But when I woke up and looked out my window, I reflected on all that I’d accomplished, how many hours I’d put into the things I was passionate about, the recognition I’d received from professors and peers. What I really felt was that not only had I done everything that I’d wanted to do, but that the people around me had noticed how hard I’d tried and appreciated me for it. I was full of pride for the impact I’d made on those people – how I’d changed video announcements, how I’d designed an actual magazine, all that I’d accomplished in swimming after eight hard years. I was happy of where I was, and excited for where I was going.
So then I took the next big step. I flew halfway across the country by myself with two big suitcases and a backpack full of camera equipment and a brand new laptop and when I arrived, I moved myself into the room with the big tree out the window. Then I did what I did best – I became so involved, so busy, that at the end of my first year I sat on a log in the woods and wrote in my journal how proud I was of where I’d gotten. That my highschool self would be proud. I’d found a home in doc studies, watching docs that were so good I was filled with excitement for what would come next. But what was even more impactful was that simple camping trip I’d went on at the beginning of the year where I found my true family. The Rec and Leisure Studies department opened its arms for me and I heard tall tales about this trip called ISP, where we went on a fabled expedition and lived outside for a whole semester. I would smile just thinking about it. And I took classes that talked about why you wanted to walk in the woods, and how the National Parks had changed the country, and how Kurt Hahn had this vision of education and how we can only hope to live up to his prophecy.
I found another home at the bottom of the lake, in a brown boathouse with yellow and white boats lining the walls. We spent golden afternoons watching hot air balloons and the leaves change on the lake. I would revel in how the fog rolled in over the lighthouses when it was promising rain. The sunrises never failed to bring a simple peace and joy to my mind. I found a sport that called to me, full of rhythm and water, and it felt like flying. I’d started a brand new challenge, and basked in the feeling that I had started something completely new and scary and come out stronger on the other side. I’d been recognized there, too. I’d broken the novice lightweight 5k record, and Becky awarded me the novice excellence award for the promise I showed and the dedication I demonstrated.
I had classes in meditation and journalism and we tried to travel around the county to find the story. I took pictures and made videos, and became an editor on The Ithacan, and we won the section of the year for our dedication and ridiculously hard work.
Yes, at the end of that first year, I was so content and amazed at how far I’d come that I left my final exams with a spring in my step and a marvelous feeling of accomplishment in the sunny air. I’d seen the leaves change for the first time, a New England fall, and I’d walked in the woods and explored every mile of trails in the natural lands. I’d danced in the rain with this boy on the crew team, and had torn my hands open on the oar in Georgia. I’d made so many friends that I was nearly guaranteed to know someone when I was in the Ithaca airport waiting to go home. And I’d learned about myself, about this thing called truth. We’d explored it in so many classes it was almost mind boggling how interconnected my education was. In different departments, across disciplines, I’d explored this concept. It was crazy how different but compatible the interpretations were. Freshman year was spent exploring truth. And i’d found something close to my truth – a good version of myself that I’d always been but finally grown into. I was pursuing my dream.
Sophomore year dawned with so much more excitement than I could have ever imagined. My nights were spent wandering around Walmart with my then-boyfriend and his roommates, playing with the toys and buying unnecessary things that made us laugh. I had WFR and Backpacking and spent the most incredible moments with my best friends in the woods, laughing over Chick-n-bap and screaming at the top of our lungs. We drank milkshakes at 10 at night and rowed fast and played hard. I found a group of people who made my soul sing, and we went outside for class and learned more than I’d ever learned in any class before. Those days are golden in my memory, light pouring into every crevice of those months where I loved deeply and learned honestly and settled into a quiet and peaceful contentment of where I was and how much I was learning and who I was becoming. It was true to myself, still that grown up version of me, but getting better and more experienced with every step. And when I moved out at the end of fall, all that was left was the anticipation of winter break as we prepared for the biggest expedition of our lives.
And then, on February 14, 2020, we woke up in Palm Springs and walked, dragging suitcases, to the airport, and we met the group that would soon be the closest family we’d ever known. And we headed out into the desert, slept among the Joshua Trees, and woke to sun over mountains. And when we said goodbye to civilization and went out into the real world for a month, we cried on mountain tops and shared deep stories in the rain and we sat alone with only the hawks and the lizards and the sunbeams for 72 hours, and we grew, oh how we grew. We came to know each other and ourselves anew. And we fell in love with this life we’d been living, and hesitated when we had to step across the wilderness boundary and back towards the world we’d left.
And then, we came back together, a whole herd, and we danced and ran and laughed. And we drove up the coast of California and played on sand dunes – the happiest we’d ever been, each and every one of us – and that immense, childlike joy followed us all the way up to Oregon and engulfed us as we prepared for what was next, and all the growing we still had left to do.
And then… the way we cried as we stood in a circle, 55 days too early, and poured our thoughts and deepest emotions onto that flag, sewn back together a little too soon, and we mourned what we had lost when COVID-19 shut down Outward Bound and this fabled ISP semester. We left and got on airplanes that we hadn’t wanted to book, and we watched the mountains fade behind us, and we grieved what would never be. I settled into a little town on the coast in Connecticut and tried to pretend I wasn’t as bad as I was, and in the end that didn’t work out so well for the two of us living in that little house.
So the summer after ISP, after the world had ended and everyone was trying to figure out how to cope with trauma, I went rafting. I found this community of people who lived in their cars and camped under the stars, and we all followed that great restlessness across the Colorado mountains as we played on the river and lived outside. And I was one step closer to doing the thing – a little closer to that person I’d always known I was, and that I’d just now grown into.
I was sitting in the car in front of an ice cream shop in Grand Lake, Colorado. We’d been hiking all day amidst the mountain peaks and deep blue lakes and thick smoke from the wildfires. My relationship had ended but I was living this deep and tangible life, a lifestyle I’d always dreamed about. And I was about to go back, getting to go to school and see the people I’d missed so much from ISP, and be involved again, having gained so much new experience and faith and excitement in the life I’d chosen.
I saw an email on my phone that said we wouldn’t be going back to school in person. I’d already booked hotels for my trip back, was only a few weeks out from packing and leaving, and now… online school again? After the horror of finishing ISP, what was supposed to be the most foundational and changing semester of my life, entirely online? I called my mom that night and told her I wasn’t going back. I wouldn’t do online school. That wasn’t why I came to college – I was too involved. I wanted to do the college experience, not sit on a computer.
But somehow a professor called me and convinced me I was needed, and I came back. I did sit on a computer, silently alone in my parent’s house, in front of a window where I could watch the birds, distanced by glass from the real world outside that I’d fought to find for so long. But the worst part, the hardest thing I’d ever done, was sit on the computer and watch my friends, my peers, everyone I met, suffer. Deep, deep suffering. And there was nothing I could do, nothing any of us could do, really. We had to sit with the suffering, yours and mine, and just get through it, somehow.
On the weekends I’d escape to the river, or to some nice house in Vail to housesit, and I’d watch the willows change on the river bank and the snow fall on the tall peaks, and I’d be ok. But then I’d come back and watch the suffering continue.
And I was alone.
In the spring, finally, I loaded up my car and drove across the country for the first time, and I ended up in a tiny little room where no natural light came in, and again I sat on Zoom half the time and watched my friends pretend they weren’t suffering. Sometimes, I sat in a classroom with two other people, some of my dearest friends, with some of my favorite professors, and we figured out the whole hybrid learning thing. We laughed sometimes, but more often stayed sullen. We didn’t cry as much anymore. It was too numb at this point.
I worked out, too, but we were separated, different stations in the boathouse. We weren’t allowed to hang out, not allowed to have anyone besides us in our rooms, had to wear masks in the lounge, couldn’t eat in the dining halls together. We cried out silently for companionship, a hug. We weren’t allowed even that.
Then they told us our department, the beloved Rec and Leisure Studies that quite literally changed the course of my life, was being eliminated. No questions asked. We fought for it – we went to the president, told her our stories, hoped that she would listen to the passion in our voice and the effect we would have on the world. Whether she listened or not – whether she heard or not – didn’t matter in the end. The decision had already been made.
Then, somehow, eventually, winter broke, and the flowers started blooming, and the warmer days brought with it days on the water in a boat again. It was something closer to real life, and we ended the year in Florida on the beach after a weekend of racing as hard as we could, looking for gators and getting into the boot faster than all the other teams. We took our masks off and forgot to put them on to go into the ice cream store to eat (oh yeah, we forgot that was ok since we’re vaccinated…) and we left with a hope that next year would be ‘normal’ again.
Now, I sit in my tiny room where no light comes in, and I know I’m a completely different person than I was before. I didn’t grow into myself. I’m not what younger Edie would have always dreamed. I’m heartbroken and defeated. I’ve watched suffering, yours and my own, and not known how to make it better. I’ve made mistakes, taken missteps. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. I’m not as fast as I was on the erg two years ago. I’m not as dedicated or as focused on school as I was two years ago. I’m not as hopeful or inspired or full of life as I was two years ago.
But I am real. I’ve experienced things. Fought through things. Fought for things. I’m stressed and unmotivated and tired, but I’m making a doc that should be something worthwhile, and I’m leading. Really leading. Throughout all of this time, leadership has been something overlooking it all, and I went from just working hard (leading by example, right?) to creating and shaping and consciously working towards a culture. A community. Not just on crew but in everything – my residence hall as an RA, my friend group and the people I love. I’ve gained some kind of empathy and leadership ability that I wouldn’t have fathomed as a freshman. And I’ve gained real world experience, seen pain and suffering, something that freshman year me knew I was missing. I’ve gained humility, and patience, and a self-awareness that I thought I had but turned out I really didn’t.
I felt that I peaked on the sand dunes in Oregon, running through the late afternoon light with people I loved. We laughed with such innocent, pure, childlike glee. I had been growing and working and building myself until I was something I was proud of. I was living the life I’d always imagined. And then continuing that, though with a little weight and sadness, as a guide on the river, living life with the water and the wind and sun every day – I was so close to my dream. And then the world came crashing down. People died. People suffered. And we were told to keep going, to pretend this wasn’t what we were experiencing. To pretend we could do all the assignments, take all the tests, like we used to. Well, we still did, because we had to. But at least for me, it was harder. A lot harder.
All this is to say that these are the milestones, the significant things, the reality of how college has gone. I was growing and so proud, so happy with who I was and how I got there, growing into a better version of myself. Now, I wonder if I’ll wake up on graduation day with the same sense of accomplishment and pride. I know I’ve changed, been transformed. A lot of it is for the better. I’m more mature, more empathetic, a better listener, a better thinker. I’ve learned to think for myself and trust authority less. I’ve learned about other people’s beliefs and learned to feel for them. I’ve learned to look honestly at myself and see where I’m at. I’ve learned to live in a world that is more clouds than sunshine. I’ve learned what really inspires me, what really makes me feel alive. Unfortunately, this last year of college feels like I’m getting farther from that.
But the year is still young. I wrote last year that my freshman year was focused on truth, my sophomore year focused on experience, my junior year focused on ethics. Where will my senior year take me? How can I grow into a better version of myself, if not the person I always was? My experiences now have shaped me to be different. What I’m learning, and what I’ll need to keep learning, is to accept that that is ok.
