Here I am at BSC as a senior after studying abroad for my junior year. I’ve been back at BSC one week, and the best part has been running into friends who I have not seen for a year, embracing them, looking into their faces, alive and bright, no longer picture or memory.
The rest has been stranger than expected.
BSC has changed. The people have changed. I have changed. BSC is no longer my tailor-made, velvet glove. I took off those gloves, waved good-bye to my country, and left both far behind. From thousands of miles away, my bare, untraveled hands roughened, exposed to the harsh elements of day after day stretching, molding, bashing my comfort zone wider and wider to include not just all my insecurities, fears, and doubts but to contain a faith in myself that I can go anywhere in this world with a confidence greater than those uncertainties.
Now I’m back, and the gloves are too small, too soft; they don’t feel like mine anymore. BSC doesn’t feel like home anymore, and I no longer know how I fit in here.
Before I left, BSC was the be-all, end-all. Now it’s so small. Physically, it’s minuscule—192 acres with a gate circling the campus, broken only by a single entrance and exit. But it goes beyond the material; what happens here is small. The people, relationships, education, dreams, and endeavors are important, but beyond those pursuits, everything else feels so small as to not even take up space. How much of a calamity can anything here be if the world is so big and so full that it does not even know that BSC exists? This perspective is not depressing; it is liberating, freeing me to focus on and to chase the worthwhile, leaving the rest alone.
Even more than small, BSC feels temporary. Freshman and sophomore year, I never wanted to leave college. Why would I? It’s camp with all your friends, interrupted by the occasional pesky essay. Now I wonder what I am still doing here. I am excited about my classes and love being with my friends, but I am ready to head into that unknown but forward direction of onwards.
Most unexpected of all, I feel older. Of course I am a year older, but I feel older than the majority of my peers who are 21, older than I anticipated I would feel at 21. I’m not signing myself into a nursing home, but my 21 years feel very real, not heavy, but undeniably present and full, undeniably lived.
But for now until May, I am at BSC, and though changed, small, and temporary, I can honestly say, I am very happy to be here.
The color is a little weird, but check out this unseasonable, freak weather.
Scarves don't exist in Alabama in September, nor do umbrellas or hot tea.
It’s like I’m back in England on a fair-weather day.
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