I still don't know what to do with "David im Deutschland", now that David is no longer on exchange but instead a boring old college student. I feel so self-indulgent writing about myself now, now that my situation is shared by so many other people. Before I was given voice simply by the uniqueness of my situation: bad or good, I was charting a place that had not been explored. Now, my writing is leveled with the masses, open to comparison on its integral merits, and I doubt that comparison is a favorable one.
Not that the college experience suffers from a dearth of writing topics. On exchange, I comforted myself with the image of my return to the states as a worldly and experienced young man, far above such childish things as homesickness and peer pressure. I have never been more disillusioned. College is an entirely different experience from exchange. I arrived in Germany into the arms of a waiting support structure. I lived with families inside their preestablished web of routine and love. Here, there was no such network; instead there was a steaming broth of young adults, with barely preestablished mealtimes to lend order to the chaos. Germany was an exercise in forming connections, breaking routines to try to forge a place for oneself. College, it sometimes seems, is the exact opposite; the nemesis isn't boredom, but overstimulation, not wasted hours but overcommitment. And in this hot soup of people and events, it is even harder than before to make and maintain lasting connections. Some days I get back to my room, exhausted and realize that I did not have a single meaningful interaction with a person I care about.
Those are the worst days. But there are plenty of better ones. College, like exchange, concentrates awesome people. The criteria are different: Less emphasis on an outgoing personality, and more on smarts, obviously. But the effect is similar: the concentration of interesting people reaches a critical mass, where the actions of the group become non-deterministically awesome. Some weekends I party and some I watch nerdy TV and some I don't do anything in particular and it is all intensely fun. Come to think of it, the modifier "Intense" applies to pretty much everything that happens here. And that's intensely awesome.
Anyway, watch this space, I guess. If I have anything I want to write, it'll end up here.
So while it may be strange that I have found your blog (you did post it on your facebook, after all) I have a few comments on this post.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, you have an incredible writing style. I love your voice and your ability to articulate what you want to say with correct spelling and grammatical turn of phrase. Seriously, thank you.
Second of all, it gets better. Sophomore year is the best year of college, from my experience. Freshmen year you are still getting your legs under you. Sophomore year you basically have a grasp on your course load and your commitments, in such you can manage your time so that you have reached your maximum fun-time potential. Junior year (if you choose to go abroad again) you are never really present on campus, always sort of pining for what you either did fall semester or will do spring semester. And senior year there is this influx of pressure from the real world demanding that you plan out the rest of your life while balancing a full course load and the requirements necessary to graduate.
What this means to say is that you are at a crossroads where you are still figuring out what college is all about and what it is that you want to accomplish here. I loved my freshman year, I met the friends that I still lean on to this very day and I really started to figure out who I am and who I want to be. College is this magnificent journey and I am so envious of you for being at the beginning of it.
If you ever find yourself in your dorm room realizing that you have gone without meaningful interaction, call me and I will come chat with you about something that we can describe as meaningful at another point. This topic will most likely be centered around how Europe is exponentially better than the US or how awesome Bill is as a choir director.
-Liz
David,
ReplyDeleteI remember reading this comment shortly after you posted it and being very interested and impressed with your descriptions. Additionally however, I was just trying to decide about and coordinate going to Linfield (my alma mater) for Homecoming. Your comment below made me realize I HAD to go back:
College, like exchange, concentrates awesome people. The criteria are different: Less emphasis on an outgoing personality, and more on smarts, obviously. But the effect is similar: the concentration of interesting people reaches a critical mass, where the actions of the group become non-deterministically awesome. Some weekends I party and some I watch nerdy TV and some I don't do anything in particular and it is all intensely fun. Come to think of it, the modifier "Intense" applies to pretty much everything that happens here. And that's intensely awesome.
I found this comment to be amazingly perceptive, and absolutely spoke to my Linfield experiences. I just got home from Homecoming and want to "exactly" what you wrote above. The friends you make in college stick with you for years. You each go on and do extraordinary, or perhaps just ordinary things in life, and the magical thing is that you connect with them 16 years later and have the same intense and extraordinary conversations with them as you had in college. It feeds your soul.
Enjoy it, love it, continue to share as you are comfortable. I enjoy watching you mature and come into your own.
Jessica