Author: Alison Surdoval

Having “gone away” for school (even if it’s only 5 hours away in my case) makes the preservation of family and community difficult. As a college student, it is acceptable (generally speaking) to be disconnected from the family. We are learning to spread our wings and forge our own lives, which is great and maybe even why we go to college (?). However, college life can also feel very self centered: these four years are about “my education” and “my future” and “my interests”. In some ways, it feels as though there is a lack of true community in a college setting because, after all, how can community be maintained if we college students focus first and foremost on ourselves? Being students at Middlebury does not ask us to hold responsibility for much else other than ourselves (we even have people clean and cook for us). It almost feels as though we’ve regressed from the family and community responsibilities that many have grown up with, and I’m curious to know how family and community will be preserved if people are here first to further themselves.

At the same time, I think students at Midd are really incredible in a lot of ways: I’m constantly impressed by people’s abilities to dedicate themselves to their studies. I wonder in many cases what the greater goal is and why people choose to go to college, probably because I don’t know the answer for myself yet. I left home to “get an education” so that I can better serve the world, a community, my family? But what about how I can be helping my family right now? Sometimes it’s hard for me to justify this whole college thing in the short term, and I’d appreciate some tips about how to preserve community and family while still attending Middlebury College.

“Be joyful/though you have considered all the facts.”
This line from Wendell Berry’s poem not only offered a sense of relief by mentioning the possibility to find joy amongst fact, but it also conveyed the somewhat disheartening realization that fact does not always (or even mostly?) lead to joyfulness. Ideally, I like to think that being exposed to and learning new facts would make one happy (because learning is supposed to be fun, right?). However, thinking about some of the facts that I’ve learned over the course of my existence, the ones that don’t provide joy, the ones that make hope and happiness feel unattainable, seem to stick. After all, how can someone be happy knowing that the icebergs are melting too quickly and polar bears are dying? Would that make us socially irresponsible people? Berry demands, in that particular line of his manifesto, that people should learn the facts and contemplate them, yet remain joyful. How does one remain joyful? Maybe partly, at least to start, joy from fact can be obtained by considering facts that provide happiness rather than sadness. Little tiny seeds grow into delicious vegetables. Fish’s gills extract oxygen from water so that they can live. Life is pretty unbelievable. Then maybe by internalizing some of life’s incredible facts, we can learn to be joyful as we consider all the facts.
I truly wish Wendell Berry had given a suggestion on how to comply to his command.