The semester is nearing an end. Exam week is looming in the distance causing some anxiety that is partially warranted and partially premature. My plans for next year at Middlebury seem to be coming together and I am reflecting a bit on what I have learned this year and what I plan to do differently next year. Going to the college that I chose was a big change from Groton, but not in the way that I'd expected. I'd expected academic liberation in a sense, a freedom to do whatever I wanted when I wanted to do it and the ability to easily become involved in a variety of social service projects. I expected to be surrounded by mature and intellectually stimulating people; those who had gone to prep schools in the past would also be seeking new beginnings and an escape from the rigid New England culture that I have become accustomed to over the past five years.
Now, this doesn't mean that there aren't people here who are mature, intellectually stimulating or counter-prep culture. There are plenty of them. I just think that I have to look a little harder to find them than I thought I would. Also, I tend to ooze a preppy residue from my time at Groton that is initially a barrier between me and the people who I want to befriend. I want people to see me for a person that I haven't been in a long time, a girl I want to resurrect now that I am free from the high pressured world of a hyper competitive private high school. I've done a lot of reconciling this past year. I've accepted the fact that I can't eliminate my connections to Groton's culture instantaneously or even entirely. I've accepted that perhaps I am a little too harsh in my initial judgments of others as well as myself. I've learned that college is not going to be as easy as I thought it would be and my leap to maturity doesn't feel like I'm doing anything necessarily different from what I was doing before.
I have certainly changed over this year and my relationships with people around me have changed. My Groton friends and I are still close, Anne was right, we can't ever lose the connection that we had from sharing our Groton experience. Distance separates us: some of us are in DC, Cleveland, NYC or California but we will never truly be far apart, as terribly cliched as that sounds. I know if I pick up the phone to hear the voice of an old friend, we will be picking up exactly where we left off. We will understand that we have changed and grown, but inside of us there will always be a Groton girl aspiring for something great, aspiring for some archetypal notion of success that seemed so very intangible all those years ago.
We will be Marks' AP Biology class or Dr. Reyes' Latin 1 class for the rest of our lives. Although there were times when we slipped into desperation, our Groton memories for the most part, serve to pull us out of our slump and remind us that we are all survivors. We are built to overcome. We are built for success. We are built to fight the negativity within ourselves, society, our parents and everyone around us to attain a sense of permanent happiness with our lives. We crave a sense of completion that can only be obtained through an intense work ethic paired with appropriate amounts of relaxation and calmness.
But, there is a new person who I'm cultivating here. And I think that everyone has their own "college person" that they work on from the moment they set foot on their respective campuses. You begin to change the things you care about. You are more sure of what you want. Changing your mind about majors or minors is not necessarily a sign of being unsure, but really accepting what you were sure of all along. Collegiate persona become more confident in what they expect from other people as friends or in a relationship. We are still young and we are still confused or wrong about many things. There is some comfort in knowing that we are growing up and starting our lives properly. My goal is to end this year better than I started it and to start next year with the goal of making it even better and learning even more than I did during my first year.
Now, this doesn't mean that there aren't people here who are mature, intellectually stimulating or counter-prep culture. There are plenty of them. I just think that I have to look a little harder to find them than I thought I would. Also, I tend to ooze a preppy residue from my time at Groton that is initially a barrier between me and the people who I want to befriend. I want people to see me for a person that I haven't been in a long time, a girl I want to resurrect now that I am free from the high pressured world of a hyper competitive private high school. I've done a lot of reconciling this past year. I've accepted the fact that I can't eliminate my connections to Groton's culture instantaneously or even entirely. I've accepted that perhaps I am a little too harsh in my initial judgments of others as well as myself. I've learned that college is not going to be as easy as I thought it would be and my leap to maturity doesn't feel like I'm doing anything necessarily different from what I was doing before.
I have certainly changed over this year and my relationships with people around me have changed. My Groton friends and I are still close, Anne was right, we can't ever lose the connection that we had from sharing our Groton experience. Distance separates us: some of us are in DC, Cleveland, NYC or California but we will never truly be far apart, as terribly cliched as that sounds. I know if I pick up the phone to hear the voice of an old friend, we will be picking up exactly where we left off. We will understand that we have changed and grown, but inside of us there will always be a Groton girl aspiring for something great, aspiring for some archetypal notion of success that seemed so very intangible all those years ago.
We will be Marks' AP Biology class or Dr. Reyes' Latin 1 class for the rest of our lives. Although there were times when we slipped into desperation, our Groton memories for the most part, serve to pull us out of our slump and remind us that we are all survivors. We are built to overcome. We are built for success. We are built to fight the negativity within ourselves, society, our parents and everyone around us to attain a sense of permanent happiness with our lives. We crave a sense of completion that can only be obtained through an intense work ethic paired with appropriate amounts of relaxation and calmness.
But, there is a new person who I'm cultivating here. And I think that everyone has their own "college person" that they work on from the moment they set foot on their respective campuses. You begin to change the things you care about. You are more sure of what you want. Changing your mind about majors or minors is not necessarily a sign of being unsure, but really accepting what you were sure of all along. Collegiate persona become more confident in what they expect from other people as friends or in a relationship. We are still young and we are still confused or wrong about many things. There is some comfort in knowing that we are growing up and starting our lives properly. My goal is to end this year better than I started it and to start next year with the goal of making it even better and learning even more than I did during my first year.
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