“I went to [college] because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach...”
It is Wednesday morning. Walking across the campus grounds with a copy of Hamlet and a cup of caffeine, an undergraduate strides briskly to her Shakespeare course in the Department of Language and Literature. Though the autumn breeze bites at the edges of her scarf, she barely notices the cold, her mind immersed entirely on thoughts of the topic of discussion that day.
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A year ago she would never have imagined herself so changed.
The phrases like “intellectual community” and “scholarly setting” had appealed to her greatly, but she still did not know quite what to expect when she arrived for her first class. After getting over the initial shock of her professor’s invitation to be called by her first name, she crossed the threshold into an entirely new realm of existence, of knowledge. Not a student felt awkward to speak up, and not a person felt afraid to disagree. Questions were asked incessantly—answers supplied in abundance and her mind completely inebriated with enlightenment after each course.
Here she had found people who were truly passionate, who were not at all ignorant of the great potential that life held, and who labored tirelessly to achieve, to create beautiful works of art, poetry, and stories. Here, again and again, she had found that she was spurred on to do the same, to explore and dig for possibilities, to seize them as they appeared, and to push herself beyond her own limits.
She could not remember the last time she had a routine. Each day brought about its own slew of surprises, different people met, intriguing lectures attended, and valuable life lessons learned. It began innocently enough with a casual conversation here and there outside the classroom when the course on Renaissance Literature had finished, people she saw again at the lecture on String Theory. Sometime two days after the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Tchaikovsky, she spotted them at the Reynolds’s Club, recruiting for College Bowl and Students in Action. When they waved “hello” to her amicably and got her name right the first time, she could not stop smiling, her heart overwhelmed with happiness as she approached her newly-made friends.
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Before she realizes it, this first-year is standing at the entrance of the building. She pauses at the entrance, her hand wavering on the handle. She glances behind her shoulder, gazing at the peaceful trees swaying in the wind, the sleepy scholars making their way to their own classes, each of them, like her, inhabitants of a priceless paradise.
Taking one last look at the world outside, she takes a deep breath, opens the door, and walks in.
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