Hi world.

How are you?

Where to begin. The first day of a new semester never fails to be a source of unprecedented entertainment. Lost freshmen, peppy sorority girls, hungover frat boys, and the invariably fleeting sense of newness and inspiration that you will watch slowly drain from the faces of those around you as the weeks crawl on.

COLLEGE KIDS

Sitting in my first class, I am thrilled to see that the mouth-breather from last semester is sitting right next to me, still mouth-breathing. He frequently talks to himself and insists on interrupting the professor at the most poorly chosen moments, driving me absolutely mad. But anyway.

Walking out of class and down the hall, I hear two gym bros sharing gym routines. Before I go any further, I’m just going to say it. This whole infatuation with the gym thing that my generation has got going on is really freaking me out. When did everyone get so obsessed with weight lifting and protein powder and wearing spandex bodysuits suits to class? It feels like being in some trippy episode of Black Mirror where no one can talk about anything but their workout. I’m all for being active and I love sports, but there’s something about the gym and all of it’s followers that feels odd. I’m convinced it’s a cult. That being said, here is how it sounds in the college hallways these days:

Bro, what did you hit? 

Legs, bro. It killed. 

Oh man, what are you pressing these days? Four-forty? Fifty?

It’s all I can do to keep a somewhat straight face. But then again, they would probably be laughing too if they heard the debate I was having with a fellow English major about which Zadie Smith novel reigns supreme. (On Beauty). To each their own and whatnot.

SEEING GHOSTS

I find a shady table to read at but get distracted watching all of the lost kids trying to find their classrooms. My neck hurts just watching theirs spin around and around in the dizzying panic that accompanies thinking that you might never find your class. They all look so young. Like, freshman in high school young. Some wear sorority and fraternity shirts like shields of armor against the scary idea of being alone in a place that is not high school, others rock their own unique style, and still some others in are in pajamas, already clutching giant cups of coffee.

Anyway. I’m walking under the sun in between classes with a blueberry-banana smoothie, feeling pretty normal, when I see a ghost. I do a double-take and see the a guy I went to high school with, walking with some friends. We sat together in biology class. We had the same friends, went to the same parties. I remember that he was always reading Lord Byron and that I thought that he was brilliant and interesting. That was senior year, the year that the world fell apart and our lives seemed to dissolve from our hands overnight. He disappeared one day with the rest of that year and his body has been lying in that massive heap of collateral damage in my memory ever since. I forgot he went here. We all moved on. We’re seniors in college now. We don’t think about what we went through so much anymore.

But when I saw him, I remembered. I remembered him and the world that we were a part of and how much of another lifetime it all appears to be enclosed within now. And everything stopped for a second. The campus and all of the people and everything loud and bright grew faded and blurry around me. It was like standing in the eye of the storm for one second, and then it was over. A giant crowd of eager sorority girls shuffled between us with their megaphones and pink crop tops, on a mission to recruit the next class of clones. Normal life resumed. I had seen a ghost, but I blinked it off. I kept walking. Him in one direction and me in the other, thinking about how truly strange it is that we have met some people for the last time.

CLOUD NINE

On a brighter note, my classes are enthralling. Most things in life are not what you expect or dream about. You think that they will be one way, and they present themselves as another. This is not one of those things. When I say that these classes that I’m taking, and the professors that are teaching them, are changing my life, I mean that.

I was sitting in this class today, listening to a favorite professor of mine spew the most brilliantly crafted sentences I think I have ever heard, thinking about how no matter how much other aspects of college life may have disappointed me, no matter the cliques or parties or pandemic protocols that butchered so much of what should never have been touched, this one thing has remained perfectly, incomprehensibly, in tact. From day one of freshman year, even on Zoom, I have felt this unrelenting magic bubble up under my skin when listening to my professors and that has only intensified with the the caliber of my courses.

I felt that today, sitting in some classroom, listening to one of my favorite professors talk. You know when a grown adult starts telling you about something that they are passionate about and their face lights up like a little kid’s and you think wow, maybe growing up doesn’t have to mean growing apathetic? That’s what sitting in this class is like. It sends me spiraling down a million rabbit-holes of thought and inspiration that I can’t help but jot down in the margins of my notes.

WHY WE LOVE SCARY THINGS

Here’s one. Today he was talking about how adolescence is an inherently barbaric experience. We go from a state of innocence to experience. We come out of it knowing something that we did not know before, something that is “not particularly nice”. Which is to say, we learn about the world. And that, he was saying, is the exact experience that frightening films and books reenact. We love Halloween and horror because they take us on that transformative journey of finding out things we never knew, even when they terrify us. Like a rollercoaster, there’s something dangerously alluring about it. We want to know what’s behind the door. We think it might change our lives.

Anyway. The point is, I’m on cloud nine. Worrisome? Probably. But inspiring? Yeah.

Happy Thursday.

Love, m.

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