Back to college

For the last time ever, I slid into the back of an Uber and made the treck from PHO to University City to start the semester.

Much like the start of school, I flew in just after it snowed. Freshman year, I scarcely paused to take it in. I was too busy contemplating, fantasizing, willing a particular version of college into existence – a montage of flashing lights and popular friends and interview-worthy experiences, a blaze of glory from which I emerged triumphant. I'm envious of that younger me. I had been a child whose ambition far outshone his introspection, someone capable of acting because I was so incapable of reflecting on whether what I was doing was right.

This time, I spent a lot more time staring out the window. I did not end up living the montage I had prophesied – though I know the strobe lights and jubilant cheers are cached somewhere in my prefrontal cortex, they don't pop up when I think of college. More pragmatically, I'm not an investment banker on his way to PE on his way to the Oval Office. Once, I thought every footprint I left would be indelible and every closed door could be opened through sheer force of will. I visualized days as steps to an inevitable coronation. I thought I'd remember the great things I accomplished.

Instead, I remember the feeling of the snow against my bare fingers my first week (I had been too arrogant to pack gloves). I remember the stray flurries of snow sneaking through an open crack in my 24th floor window and melting on my desk. I remember the raucous halls of the COVID dorms and bike rides to Planet Fitness and tending to my plants in another apartment, 22 floors below the first, next to the trash compactor. I'm nostalgic for the first time I tried every one of the coffee shops scattered across Philly. I remember cooking for friends and staying up late in people's dorms and laughing at movies. I remember the hours I sank into Pottruck: first out of insecurity, then ego, then habit, and last in search of the comfortable dull pain of repetitive effort. In search of highlights, I can only recall my habits.

I think of my falls from grace, my many failures to be a good partner or leader or friends. I've forgotten the initial feeling of failure; often, those were tempered in the moment by anger or frustration or defensiveness. I felt those most acutely far after the fact, after all other emotion had been stripped away and I was left facing nothing but icy self reproach.

I can trace the slow, yet sudden realization that the world wasn't created to bend to my will – that I was neither the charming scion of money or power nor a prodigy on par with von Neumann. I feel myself recalibrating my life, again and again, to find the path of least resistance to greatness. I don't know when I realized that was an oxymoron.

Most vividly, I remember the ones that sat with me in dim rooms and during late night drives and on walks around campus in those moments. These last four years, my friends have cajoled me into staying hopeful, reproached me for my indiscretions, threatened to walk out on my unwillingness to acknowledge mistakes, and nevertheless stayed by my side when I didn't recalibrate. Their presence has been my thread of continuity, crystallizing both bitter and pleasant lessons into tangible actions.

If Penn remembers me, it will only a footnote of someone with more ego than sense. Similarly, with time, the colors of my memory wil fade; my hippocampus will no longer capture the ecstacy and acrid bitterness of my highlights and lowlights. I have conviction that the tapestry of continuity will remain the invisible force shaping my principles and values.

My 19-year old self would perhaps be disappointed that I think so little of the electric moments, but I no longer think a college experience is anything like a montage. It's craning your neck out a window to see the snow fall while writing sentences in your head. It's the reflection between the moments.