For most of my life, I’ve turned to others for approval, support, and validation. At a young age I started to base my value as a human being off of how well I succeeded in sports. I wanted to please my coaches, I wanted to be the fastest girl, I wanted to be the best on the team because I thought it meant I would be the best in the world.
One brisk Sunday at the beginning of April, I had a nasty fall in a game and was out for the rest of the season. The recovery was hard emotionally and physically, and when I could finally rejoin my teammates I soon realized I couldn’t keep up with them like I could before. I started to believe that because that girl was better than me at lacrosse, she was a better person than me. Because she was more valuable on the field, she was more valuable off. I struggled to even acknowledge the fact that I relied on other people to believe in me instead of just believing in myself. I no longer viewed sports as an enjoyable activity, and instead viewed them as a chore.
However, all of that changed when I joined my first ski team. My coach constantly emphasized that above all he wanted us to have fun, and could not care less if we placed first or dead last. For the first time in a long time I felt like I was part of a team that valued me as a person and not just my contributions to the sport itself. I started to realize that seeking external validation, especially from other people, is just a never ending cycle that results in me being unhappy. I started to believe in myself and be proud of myself through skiing instead of waiting for someone else to tell me they were. Now, I can see how important it was for me to cross the border of relying on others for confidence to relying on myself before I faced challenges that would have left me struggling.
I did not expect to experience such a difficult transition to a culture that seemed more welcome than any other. As I came to the US on a quest for academic excellence, in my first two years, I struggled to wrap my head around the American value. One that is seemingly everywhere, but when I went to look for it, one that was nowhere to be found. It’s interesting how kids socialize differently on the other side of the world, although there are threads of similarities, I failed to adjust myself for the bigger change. For a while, I was proud of my nonconformity, the ability to stay true to my roots, but the more I realized how much I was missing out on, the more I wanted to change.
The change I wanted was sudden and drastic. I wanted to be like the kid who knows how to rock climb, mountain bike, play lacrosse, and who everyone seemed to enjoy being around. Eventually, a part of me became that kid. Yet as that transition occurred within, I began experiencing even more ambiguity in regard to my identity. Just who am I, a Chinese kid or an American teenager? Which one should I be?
It was a tough question to answer, especially when I was only 16. But as I grew older I began to understand more of what I could be. I need not to be defined by a word or an idea. I didn’t have to be on the polar opposite ends of the spectrum, but that I could be anything in between, an undefinable, constantly changing person that I am, and will be.
The first border that I came across was the contradiction between being female and the outdoor industry. More specifically, buying clothes at Eastern Mountain Sports (an outdoor gear brand usually referred to as EMS) and having no choice. Over the years I have discovered that outdoor brands frequently have much more selection in the men’s gear, shoes, and clothes sections. This phenomena occurs because frequently men participate more in the outdoors because it is easier for them to do so. It is easier to be a man and participate in the outdoors because you are not expected to have and take care of a family and are not ridiculed for “abandoning” your family to go on expeditions. Therefore, more outdoor brands sell more men’s clothing. The first time I went to EMS to buy myself clothes, I was thirteen years old, and was getting ready for my first real backpacking trip. There were about two shirts, one pink and both v-necks, which was not what I was looking for at all. Pants were no better. So, I ended up heading on my first backpack in soccer shorts and cotton t-shirts, which if you know anything about backpacking, isn’t the most functional. In later years, I learned to shop more in the men’s section and online (where there is typically more selection) but that thirteen year old girl is still in the back of my mind and often asks me why I can’t do something as basic as buying clothes that are actually made for me and are functional.
Throughout high school I pushed away anything but academics. Balancing a contradiction is the nature of overcoming a border–even a self imposed one. I have yet to overcome the one between my academic and social life. I have a certain disdain for people who come to school to have fun rather than to learn. Deep down I resent that they are free to care less about everything, to have fun and live life to the fullest. At Middlebury I continue to struggle with this balance despite my awareness of it. I still use academics as an excuse to get out of the social interaction that I fear. I fear it because I don’t understand it and so I push it away. The borders I constructed in high school to hide from being social kept me from trying and failing to be social. Without failing, never learning; without learning, always fearing; and with fearing maintaining a border. A border to push away the complexities that I will never own or simplify.
My high school was extremely small and we lacked the clubs, extracurricular activities, and athletic teams most bigger schools had. It was because of this that I was able to play on the lacrosse team of a neighboring and larger high school. Getting thrown into this new community was both a profound and a daunting experience. Profound because it helped me recognize the privilege I was receiving by going to a smaller, more intimate, and academically oriented school. Daunting because I was a sole outsider on foreign fields, trying to mend, mold and adapt to their language and their ways.
The border I felt wasn’t a physical one, but everyday I knowingly crossed it. I became increasingly aware of the existence of two versions of myself that adapted to crossing a border that no one else traveled over. Who I chose to be was in constant fluctuation as I navigated across these borders, constantly trying to mold myself into an ally to those I was sharing space with. Over time the border I independently crossed everyday gave way to the building of a gate that allowed others to explore the possibility of crossing a border that was previously unacceptable. The border was initially only mine to cross but what it turned out to become was the opportunity to create a pathway between two separate worlds.
When you think of famous martial artists, names like Mohamad Ali, Jacki Chan, Bruce Lee, Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather come to mind. Notice anything? They are all male. This issue isn’t unique to martial arts, women athletes get less attention, less money, and are valued less than male athletes. Of course you have the occasional outlier such as Serena Williams and Gabby Douglas, but can you name a female boxer? I can’t.
A gender border exists in martial arts and it’s terrifying to overcome. When I walk into a gym full of tall, protein-shake, truck men wearing a summer dress and mascara with my curling-iron hair, I can’t help but feel out of place. I am constantly proving that I deserve to be in the room even though I can’t lift 350 lbs. Thankfully, I’ve come to know that what you look like or what gender you are doesn’t determine what you’re capable of. In order to be a woman in a male dominated sport, you learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
While on a run one Sunday morning in 2019, I was stopped by a woman I didn’t know. She told me I had long legs, she asked me if I modeled and then she handed me a business card. In my first meeting with an agent, she described me as the “cookie cutter type they looked for” and at the time, I took it only as a compliment. A few months later, I signed a contract and joined an industry that turns the “talent’s” physical features into something profitable… but I wasn’t exploiting myself by doing so, was I?
The borders of the modeling industry itself are fairly rigid. Each job description specifies the exact shape of the cookie cutter the casting director is looking to fill. “Must be 5’11” and size 0-2” read the sheet that disappointed me most. I wasn’t a size 0-2 and just like that, the opportunity was gone. Was it my fault? Maybe I didn’t want it badly enough. Why did I even want it?
However, when I think about my personal connection to modeling, I’ve never seen such blurry borders. Is modeling anti-feminist? Do people think models don’t respect themselves? When is it too much? I’d never do a nude shoot but is a bikini fine? What’s that story behind that face? That pose? Who are these photos for? Are my loved ones judging me? Should I be embarrassed? Why do I not get to see all the photos? Aren’t they of me? That doesn’t feel right. But it’s just a job. Right?
“Clearly the Colombian blood won out”, my white grandma said appraisingly. “Lo” my Colombian grandpa starts in Spanish only to cut himself off with a scowl. Having a white dad and a Latina mom, I’m too white for my mom’s family and not white enough for my dad’s.
And it’s neither Colombia nor the US that I consider to have the greatest impact on my development as a human being…
It’s Singapore and China.
There I’m “waiguoren” (foreigner)…
Thus
I transcend, using language and cultural knowledge to go across geographical and social borders.
Yet some use these aspects of my identity to trap and exclude me.
My parents are both victims of the financial ignorance that comes with a wealthy childhood. Money was never discussed, never a worry. They summered in Newport, learned how to drive the family boat before they could drive a car. Now, I use ‘summer’ as a verb. They gave me tennis lessons, buffets at the club, the same beautiful life that they had at my age, but it wasn’t theirs to give. My grandparents have financed all of my education; they paid for the dinners and the tennis lessons. My parents were starving artists. I grew up in L.A. because my mom was pursuing an acting career, “following her dreams,” and we were all so proud of her, but California is way too expensive for an actress and an artist with three kids. They used their parents to scrape by. I will not have that option. Music is my passion, something I would chase to L.A. if I had a chance like my mom did, but now it seems like a wall has formed between the thing I love and the thing I need to sustain the life I’ve been enjoying for the last eighteen years: money. Middlebury is the place where I hope to break a hole in this border and get the best of both sides, where I hope to understand if it was actually me who put it there, and where I hope to discover if it’s even there at all.
Whenever someone encounters a new place there are immediate borders set up around them. There are areas in which they are not allowed or do not even know about, people who are weary of newcomers, and physical borders that differentiate where they are versus where they came from. When someone arrives in a new place people tell them what to do or where to go under the pretense of helping them, yet this just sets up more borders. Locals pride themselves on having secret spots that only other locals would know about and visit. Additionally, many locals complain and find a common enemy in the new and naive.
Coming to Middlebury I have definitely felt some of these borders associated with new places. I am limited to the very few locations that I know, separated by mountains and hours of driving from my previous life, and one look at the social media app YikYak tells me that some people strongly dislike the idea of newcomers. However, I am confident that many of these borders will soon dissolve and that Middlebury will feel like a home and the strangers family. I also know that in four years I will be moving on to a new place with new borders and continue the cycle of borders in life. I want my identity to be a combination of all the borders that I break (just like Anzaldúa).
The physical border that cuts through my heart is the Atlantic Ocean. When I moved from London, England to New York City in 2005, the gut-wrenching fear of the unknown left me with a resounding sense of lostness. I could never make sense of the noise and hustle culture of New York and longed to go back to my London days. I didn’t realize when I first moved, my identity in New York was dependent on the basis that I was this British girl in a foreign city, waiting to go home. I loved living in two worlds, where each one was unfamiliar with the other. It was like I had two separate lives, two versions of myself that never seemed to converge. I was privileged enough to have had the ability to travel back to London for the majority of my school breaks, so my elementary and middle school years were defined by trips home. Some of my favorite memories were the ones where I would fly to London as an unaccompanied minor and just turn up at my Grandmother’s front door.
However, I think everything seemed to change as I entered my high school years; both my grandparents passed away, my uncles and aunts that used to live close by got married and left central London, and it felt like my cousins went from playing in the back garden to graduating college in an instant. I remember being a sophomore in high school and visiting my grandparent’s home for the first time since losing my grandparents. Physically, this was my home. Everything on my Grandmother’s dresser was untouched; hair still remained in her brush, cookie crumbs were still at the bottom of her drawer, and her red heels I used to try on were still where I last left them. However, it didn’t feel like my home anymore and this visit to London felt uncomfortable, hard, and foreign. It was sort of like reliving a part of my life that I no longer recognized. I truly believe a part of me, a part of my identity, and a part of my family disappeared long before I could process what had happened. My border crumbled too quickly. I no longer hop across this border, these two worlds. Instead, I am now forever stuck on one side, unable to cross, and slowly forgetting what the other side used to look like.
The idea of time and how I should use it has been a continual internal conflict throughout my life. I was able to think about my complex relationship with time during my recent gap semester. During these five months, I struggled with the unrelenting worry that I was not doing enough with my time. In high school, I had a structured schedule. Jumping from activity to school to work; I struggled then with not having enough time, oddly enough. I had never considered taking a gap semester, so when I was presented with the opportunity to do so, part of me believed it was a waste of time. The other, felt a sense of freedom. Free to take risks and to be spontaneous for the first time in my life.
However, the nagging worry of what I was going to do during an unstructured five months was on the forefront of my worry list. Even more, my family and friends were constantly asking what my plan was for my gap semester. I eventually did a combination of travel, work and volunteering, but I could never still the flurry of anxious thoughts. I thrive from productivity, but there were parts of my gap semester that were not so “productive”. During these moments, I would become insecure. Am I doing enough? Should I be traveling longer? Do my parents consider me lazy?
Looking back on the past five months, I have realized that my gap semester was an opportunity for self-exploration. I now view the “unproductive” moments of my gap semester as an unexpected reset. I have come to a understanding that it is ok to take a break. Even so, the worries persist. What else do I need to add to my to-do list? Should I be doing more? Finding a constant line between my busy and leisure time is an intention that I have set for myself this semester. Yet, I have also come to realize that this self-perceived line needs to be flexible as I navigate a new life at Middlebury College.
The first border that came to mind for me is the reality of living in a bubble in Virginia. I live in Alexandria, which is at the absolute top of VA, a 10-minute drive to the US Capitol. In Alexandria, we live in our liberal DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) bubble. We have universal political beliefs, a higher average income, and an attitude that matches that of the surrounding area and people. However, I still live in Virginia. The southern state that just elected a new Republican governor for the first time I can remember. The southern state that was the capital of the confederacy, and where the Charlottesville white supremacy riots took place.
This is something I have slowly had to come to terms with. Since being at an age where I have been aware of my political beliefs, I have known my Virginia to align with those beliefs. Where I lived, we all thought and believed similarly. This is not the reality. The reality is there are pockets scattered throughout Virginia that align with what I thought the state was for so long. These borders can be so clearly seen on any political map of Virginia, and I have always aligned with those pockets. Regardless, it is still Virginia. I spent my summers deep in southwest Virginia sandwiched between West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Here, my little pocket that I align with disappear. I learn more about “traditional” Virginia values. I feel the border that is both self and culturally created lower a little as I learn the stories of those living here, even if I disagree.
Recently, I have been grappling with what I say when asked where I am from. I can say “oh, just outside of DC”, or, I can say Virginia. Essentially, I can choose whether I want to emphasize this border or not. Right now, I say I am from Virginia. I choose to be aware of this border and how is connected with me as a person and my personal values. I believe I have to be aware of how much I internalize, embrace, and resist everything that comes with it.
For most of my life, I’ve turned to others for approval, support, and validation. At a young age I started to base my value as a human being off of how well I succeeded in sports. I wanted to please my coaches, I wanted to be the fastest girl, I wanted to be the best on the team because I thought it meant I would be the best in the world.
One brisk Sunday at the beginning of April, I had a nasty fall in a game and was out for the rest of the season. The recovery was hard emotionally and physically, and when I could finally rejoin my teammates I soon realized I couldn’t keep up with them like I could before. I started to believe that because that girl was better than me at lacrosse, she was a better person than me. Because she was more valuable on the field, she was more valuable off. I struggled to even acknowledge the fact that I relied on other people to believe in me instead of just believing in myself. I no longer viewed sports as an enjoyable activity, and instead viewed them as a chore.
However, all of that changed when I joined my first ski team. My coach constantly emphasized that above all he wanted us to have fun, and could not care less if we placed first or dead last. For the first time in a long time I felt like I was part of a team that valued me as a person and not just my contributions to the sport itself. I started to realize that seeking external validation, especially from other people, is just a never ending cycle that results in me being unhappy. I started to believe in myself and be proud of myself through skiing instead of waiting for someone else to tell me they were. Now, I can see how important it was for me to cross the border of relying on others for confidence to relying on myself before I faced challenges that would have left me struggling.
I did not expect to experience such a difficult transition to a culture that seemed more welcome than any other. As I came to the US on a quest for academic excellence, in my first two years, I struggled to wrap my head around the American value. One that is seemingly everywhere, but when I went to look for it, one that was nowhere to be found. It’s interesting how kids socialize differently on the other side of the world, although there are threads of similarities, I failed to adjust myself for the bigger change. For a while, I was proud of my nonconformity, the ability to stay true to my roots, but the more I realized how much I was missing out on, the more I wanted to change.
The change I wanted was sudden and drastic. I wanted to be like the kid who knows how to rock climb, mountain bike, play lacrosse, and who everyone seemed to enjoy being around. Eventually, a part of me became that kid. Yet as that transition occurred within, I began experiencing even more ambiguity in regard to my identity. Just who am I, a Chinese kid or an American teenager? Which one should I be?
It was a tough question to answer, especially when I was only 16. But as I grew older I began to understand more of what I could be. I need not to be defined by a word or an idea. I didn’t have to be on the polar opposite ends of the spectrum, but that I could be anything in between, an undefinable, constantly changing person that I am, and will be.
The first border that I came across was the contradiction between being female and the outdoor industry. More specifically, buying clothes at Eastern Mountain Sports (an outdoor gear brand usually referred to as EMS) and having no choice. Over the years I have discovered that outdoor brands frequently have much more selection in the men’s gear, shoes, and clothes sections. This phenomena occurs because frequently men participate more in the outdoors because it is easier for them to do so. It is easier to be a man and participate in the outdoors because you are not expected to have and take care of a family and are not ridiculed for “abandoning” your family to go on expeditions. Therefore, more outdoor brands sell more men’s clothing. The first time I went to EMS to buy myself clothes, I was thirteen years old, and was getting ready for my first real backpacking trip. There were about two shirts, one pink and both v-necks, which was not what I was looking for at all. Pants were no better. So, I ended up heading on my first backpack in soccer shorts and cotton t-shirts, which if you know anything about backpacking, isn’t the most functional. In later years, I learned to shop more in the men’s section and online (where there is typically more selection) but that thirteen year old girl is still in the back of my mind and often asks me why I can’t do something as basic as buying clothes that are actually made for me and are functional.
Throughout high school I pushed away anything but academics. Balancing a contradiction is the nature of overcoming a border–even a self imposed one. I have yet to overcome the one between my academic and social life. I have a certain disdain for people who come to school to have fun rather than to learn. Deep down I resent that they are free to care less about everything, to have fun and live life to the fullest. At Middlebury I continue to struggle with this balance despite my awareness of it. I still use academics as an excuse to get out of the social interaction that I fear. I fear it because I don’t understand it and so I push it away. The borders I constructed in high school to hide from being social kept me from trying and failing to be social. Without failing, never learning; without learning, always fearing; and with fearing maintaining a border. A border to push away the complexities that I will never own or simplify.
My high school was extremely small and we lacked the clubs, extracurricular activities, and athletic teams most bigger schools had. It was because of this that I was able to play on the lacrosse team of a neighboring and larger high school. Getting thrown into this new community was both a profound and a daunting experience. Profound because it helped me recognize the privilege I was receiving by going to a smaller, more intimate, and academically oriented school. Daunting because I was a sole outsider on foreign fields, trying to mend, mold and adapt to their language and their ways.
The border I felt wasn’t a physical one, but everyday I knowingly crossed it. I became increasingly aware of the existence of two versions of myself that adapted to crossing a border that no one else traveled over. Who I chose to be was in constant fluctuation as I navigated across these borders, constantly trying to mold myself into an ally to those I was sharing space with. Over time the border I independently crossed everyday gave way to the building of a gate that allowed others to explore the possibility of crossing a border that was previously unacceptable. The border was initially only mine to cross but what it turned out to become was the opportunity to create a pathway between two separate worlds.
When you think of famous martial artists, names like Mohamad Ali, Jacki Chan, Bruce Lee, Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather come to mind. Notice anything? They are all male. This issue isn’t unique to martial arts, women athletes get less attention, less money, and are valued less than male athletes. Of course you have the occasional outlier such as Serena Williams and Gabby Douglas, but can you name a female boxer? I can’t.
A gender border exists in martial arts and it’s terrifying to overcome. When I walk into a gym full of tall, protein-shake, truck men wearing a summer dress and mascara with my curling-iron hair, I can’t help but feel out of place. I am constantly proving that I deserve to be in the room even though I can’t lift 350 lbs. Thankfully, I’ve come to know that what you look like or what gender you are doesn’t determine what you’re capable of. In order to be a woman in a male dominated sport, you learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
While on a run one Sunday morning in 2019, I was stopped by a woman I didn’t know. She told me I had long legs, she asked me if I modeled and then she handed me a business card. In my first meeting with an agent, she described me as the “cookie cutter type they looked for” and at the time, I took it only as a compliment. A few months later, I signed a contract and joined an industry that turns the “talent’s” physical features into something profitable… but I wasn’t exploiting myself by doing so, was I?
The borders of the modeling industry itself are fairly rigid. Each job description specifies the exact shape of the cookie cutter the casting director is looking to fill. “Must be 5’11” and size 0-2” read the sheet that disappointed me most. I wasn’t a size 0-2 and just like that, the opportunity was gone. Was it my fault? Maybe I didn’t want it badly enough. Why did I even want it?
However, when I think about my personal connection to modeling, I’ve never seen such blurry borders. Is modeling anti-feminist? Do people think models don’t respect themselves? When is it too much? I’d never do a nude shoot but is a bikini fine? What’s that story behind that face? That pose? Who are these photos for? Are my loved ones judging me? Should I be embarrassed? Why do I not get to see all the photos? Aren’t they of me? That doesn’t feel right. But it’s just a job. Right?
“Clearly the Colombian blood won out”, my white grandma said appraisingly. “Lo” my Colombian grandpa starts in Spanish only to cut himself off with a scowl. Having a white dad and a Latina mom, I’m too white for my mom’s family and not white enough for my dad’s.
And it’s neither Colombia nor the US that I consider to have the greatest impact on my development as a human being…
It’s Singapore and China.
There I’m “waiguoren” (foreigner)…
Thus
I transcend, using language and cultural knowledge to go across geographical and social borders.
Yet some use these aspects of my identity to trap and exclude me.
Like walls.
My parents are both victims of the financial ignorance that comes with a wealthy childhood. Money was never discussed, never a worry. They summered in Newport, learned how to drive the family boat before they could drive a car. Now, I use ‘summer’ as a verb. They gave me tennis lessons, buffets at the club, the same beautiful life that they had at my age, but it wasn’t theirs to give. My grandparents have financed all of my education; they paid for the dinners and the tennis lessons. My parents were starving artists. I grew up in L.A. because my mom was pursuing an acting career, “following her dreams,” and we were all so proud of her, but California is way too expensive for an actress and an artist with three kids. They used their parents to scrape by. I will not have that option. Music is my passion, something I would chase to L.A. if I had a chance like my mom did, but now it seems like a wall has formed between the thing I love and the thing I need to sustain the life I’ve been enjoying for the last eighteen years: money. Middlebury is the place where I hope to break a hole in this border and get the best of both sides, where I hope to understand if it was actually me who put it there, and where I hope to discover if it’s even there at all.
The Border of New Places
Whenever someone encounters a new place there are immediate borders set up around them. There are areas in which they are not allowed or do not even know about, people who are weary of newcomers, and physical borders that differentiate where they are versus where they came from. When someone arrives in a new place people tell them what to do or where to go under the pretense of helping them, yet this just sets up more borders. Locals pride themselves on having secret spots that only other locals would know about and visit. Additionally, many locals complain and find a common enemy in the new and naive.
Coming to Middlebury I have definitely felt some of these borders associated with new places. I am limited to the very few locations that I know, separated by mountains and hours of driving from my previous life, and one look at the social media app YikYak tells me that some people strongly dislike the idea of newcomers. However, I am confident that many of these borders will soon dissolve and that Middlebury will feel like a home and the strangers family. I also know that in four years I will be moving on to a new place with new borders and continue the cycle of borders in life. I want my identity to be a combination of all the borders that I break (just like Anzaldúa).
The physical border that cuts through my heart is the Atlantic Ocean. When I moved from London, England to New York City in 2005, the gut-wrenching fear of the unknown left me with a resounding sense of lostness. I could never make sense of the noise and hustle culture of New York and longed to go back to my London days. I didn’t realize when I first moved, my identity in New York was dependent on the basis that I was this British girl in a foreign city, waiting to go home. I loved living in two worlds, where each one was unfamiliar with the other. It was like I had two separate lives, two versions of myself that never seemed to converge. I was privileged enough to have had the ability to travel back to London for the majority of my school breaks, so my elementary and middle school years were defined by trips home. Some of my favorite memories were the ones where I would fly to London as an unaccompanied minor and just turn up at my Grandmother’s front door.
However, I think everything seemed to change as I entered my high school years; both my grandparents passed away, my uncles and aunts that used to live close by got married and left central London, and it felt like my cousins went from playing in the back garden to graduating college in an instant. I remember being a sophomore in high school and visiting my grandparent’s home for the first time since losing my grandparents. Physically, this was my home. Everything on my Grandmother’s dresser was untouched; hair still remained in her brush, cookie crumbs were still at the bottom of her drawer, and her red heels I used to try on were still where I last left them. However, it didn’t feel like my home anymore and this visit to London felt uncomfortable, hard, and foreign. It was sort of like reliving a part of my life that I no longer recognized. I truly believe a part of me, a part of my identity, and a part of my family disappeared long before I could process what had happened. My border crumbled too quickly. I no longer hop across this border, these two worlds. Instead, I am now forever stuck on one side, unable to cross, and slowly forgetting what the other side used to look like.
The idea of time and how I should use it has been a continual internal conflict throughout my life. I was able to think about my complex relationship with time during my recent gap semester. During these five months, I struggled with the unrelenting worry that I was not doing enough with my time. In high school, I had a structured schedule. Jumping from activity to school to work; I struggled then with not having enough time, oddly enough. I had never considered taking a gap semester, so when I was presented with the opportunity to do so, part of me believed it was a waste of time. The other, felt a sense of freedom. Free to take risks and to be spontaneous for the first time in my life.
However, the nagging worry of what I was going to do during an unstructured five months was on the forefront of my worry list. Even more, my family and friends were constantly asking what my plan was for my gap semester. I eventually did a combination of travel, work and volunteering, but I could never still the flurry of anxious thoughts. I thrive from productivity, but there were parts of my gap semester that were not so “productive”. During these moments, I would become insecure. Am I doing enough? Should I be traveling longer? Do my parents consider me lazy?
Looking back on the past five months, I have realized that my gap semester was an opportunity for self-exploration. I now view the “unproductive” moments of my gap semester as an unexpected reset. I have come to a understanding that it is ok to take a break. Even so, the worries persist. What else do I need to add to my to-do list? Should I be doing more? Finding a constant line between my busy and leisure time is an intention that I have set for myself this semester. Yet, I have also come to realize that this self-perceived line needs to be flexible as I navigate a new life at Middlebury College.
The first border that came to mind for me is the reality of living in a bubble in Virginia. I live in Alexandria, which is at the absolute top of VA, a 10-minute drive to the US Capitol. In Alexandria, we live in our liberal DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) bubble. We have universal political beliefs, a higher average income, and an attitude that matches that of the surrounding area and people. However, I still live in Virginia. The southern state that just elected a new Republican governor for the first time I can remember. The southern state that was the capital of the confederacy, and where the Charlottesville white supremacy riots took place.
This is something I have slowly had to come to terms with. Since being at an age where I have been aware of my political beliefs, I have known my Virginia to align with those beliefs. Where I lived, we all thought and believed similarly. This is not the reality. The reality is there are pockets scattered throughout Virginia that align with what I thought the state was for so long. These borders can be so clearly seen on any political map of Virginia, and I have always aligned with those pockets. Regardless, it is still Virginia. I spent my summers deep in southwest Virginia sandwiched between West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Here, my little pocket that I align with disappear. I learn more about “traditional” Virginia values. I feel the border that is both self and culturally created lower a little as I learn the stories of those living here, even if I disagree.
Recently, I have been grappling with what I say when asked where I am from. I can say “oh, just outside of DC”, or, I can say Virginia. Essentially, I can choose whether I want to emphasize this border or not. Right now, I say I am from Virginia. I choose to be aware of this border and how is connected with me as a person and my personal values. I believe I have to be aware of how much I internalize, embrace, and resist everything that comes with it.