End of Summer

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Summer always goes by too quickly. Whether or not you live by the academic calendar, Labor Day seems to mark the end of relaxed living, even if you are just as busy in the summer as you may be during the rest of the year. At a barbeque tonight, I was asked a few times where I go to school, always followed up with, “do you like it there?” The answer to me is a no-brainer: I love it. So why do I suddenly have that old “back to school” feeling?

 

I had a great summer, but spending all of my time outside of small-town Vermont made writing for this website challenging. After all, it is a blog about Middlebury, as told by me and Sam. Looking back on the last three months as a whole, however, made writing a blog entry much easier. I was far away from Middlebury—spending most of the summer with family in Maryland and in New York—but my thoughts often drifted to life and friends at school. (And not just because I unexpectedly ran into Middlebury graduates in College Park, Maryland, at the Washington Nationals Stadium, and in mid-town Manhattan.)

                                          

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How familiar…

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Back in Brooklyn, I unexpectedly ran into a friend from Middlebury on my block yesterday. It might not seem so strange; a lot of Middlebury students hail from the Big Apple as I do. This chance encounter caught me off guard though because I had just been thinking about how good it felt to be walking around in a city—the noise and smells, the sights and the pace—how different it was from Middlebury. How different the busyness of urban life was from that of life at school, how strange it felt to look at the people I passed and not recognize a single face in a neighborhood that otherwise felt so familiar.

                                                                                     

As I turned the corner, I made eye contact with the next presumed stranger. Instead, I saw a face that I recognized. Sylvia and I chatted for a few minutes, I met her mother, and we walked away with tentative plans to meet up soon. It was so nice to have the familiarity of both of my “worlds”—Middlebury and New York—all in one moment.

 

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The Great Outdoors

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Tonight I made a comment to my sister that she should use her backyard more. As a graduate student, she told me that she would love to get outside more and “take advantage of nature,” but lately she has not had the time. For someone who grew up in a city, in a land of high-rise buildings and attached houses, this idea of nature is not so strange. David Rakoff summed it up best: if a New Yorker wanted greenery, he should order a plate of spinach.

 

I chuckled as I looked out at my sister’s fenced-in plot of nature. At Middlebury, I have been “introduced” to nature firsthand. I spent my first few semesters admiring the natural beauty from afar—from my room in Ross, overlooking the Champlain Valley and the Adirondacks to the west. I had a few outdoor labs for my first-year seminar, but I think I was too wrapped up in the newness of school to realize what a fantastic opportunity the surrounding areas offered. It was only this year when nature and I finally had a real introduction. I went on my first hike—a great hike—up Camel’s Hump, part of the Green Mountains in Huntington. From the peak you can look across from New Hampshire to New York. It was one of the best days I’ve had in Vermont.

 

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From China

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The greatest challenge of a student representative of the College to Middlebury’s alumni is to capture in writing what makes Middlebury such a special place, finding the right words to evoke simultaneously both the alumni’s memories of the past and a current student’s impressions of the present. Although our Middlebury experiences are separated in time and, especially because Midd alumni are spread all over the globe, our day-to-day lives are now separated by great space, the common Middlebury experiences we all share are no less substantial. Middlebury enjoys change, in its students, teachers, and building, but the longer that I am here, the more I appreciate that there is nonetheless a constant to Middlebury that is truly special.

 

That I even think of myself right now “here” at Middlebury underscores how Middlebury is more than just a beautiful campus and cozy dorm room looking out at the Green Mountains in Vermont or even a discrete time period of a time. At this moment, I am in Hangzhou, China, spending my winter and spring terms at the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School in China. Though thousands of miles from Middlebury, Vermont, I feel no less a part of the Middlebury campus, and no less close to my friends spread over the globe, much the same way Midd alums are. No doubt being away from Vermont makes me especially appreciative of how for alumni the Middlebury experience can stay with you long after graduation.

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Traveling Eastward

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I recently returned to the United States from one of Middlebury’s J-term trips abroad. Our group traveled to Vilnius, Lithuania and Odessa, Ukraine, spending one week in each city. I was eager to participate mostly for personal reasons; my family originally came from this corner of the world. I quickly realized though that I was in for much more than a heritage tour. This experience would really change my academic outlook too.

As a history major, I was struck by the power of oral history—studying history through firsthand, oral accounts of the events—and of the importance of geography in shaping how a community deals with its history. In my opinion, the two are inextricably linked. If a story is told well, the retelling feels as vivid for listener as the experience was for the storyteller. This usually involves giving the listener a sense of place, such as in a city, or even in a specific building. It is important to know how the surroundings looked and felt to the person in that moment.

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