'everything and nothing: college life in a nutshell'

Parties. First loves. Drunken makeouts. Nights out with the girls. Morning classes. Last-minute assignment crams. O-week. Small talk with strangers. What’s your major? What classes are you taking? Office hours. Free movies. Game evenings. Applications. Mock interviews. Weekends away.


And then in between— solitude. So much of it.

College life is interesting. Your schedule’s crammed-in, like a tortilla fighting to contain everything within itself, filled with assignments on the to-do list and appointments to make and résumés to update. Classmates talk quick, everyone quick to laugh, and so you accustom yourself to the way everything moves, pachinko, kuk-kuk-kuk, bouncing back and forth between invisible pins, between classes, between deadlines that are only arbitrary in the end.


I’m sitting in a café, facing the street. On the opposite side, the last of the sun for today lingers on the end corner of the older-style brownstones, making a corner that glows a transformative orange. The sky is cloudless and of that blue that resembles the place you were when you first heard music that made your whole body shiver gloriously (for me, Mozart). Snow from the winter storm that merited an email advisory last week lingers in patches on the pavement, clumping to itself, small mountains of matter.


This is my second year of being in university; my third semester, technically, and still I’m adjusting myself to the amount of time you truly have to yourself. Everyone knows the campus is a bubble. You still get to play the student, lucky, that test was fucked up, I’m so cooked, scramble for that assignment before midnight, complain those terms of endearment to academia you have repeated for the last decade or so. At the same time— away from your parents’ eyes, from your hometown or your home country, if you’re especially fortunate, you reinvent yourself. Galatea and Pygmalion; you, lovely you, get to make yourself as you want, no ground rules. Get to fuck around with who you want, skive classes, land yourself in a job you’re under- or over-qualified for, still young and strong enough to lend everything to energy drinks and caffeine and the seat of your pants.
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It’s foolish to tie yourself down, you hear from beer halls and dating apps and from your friends, because this is the place for change. Get out there and try everything. And so you do. You go skydiving, you join clubs, you do stupid things, you draw looks from strangers, you offer up parts of yourself you never have before. You become someone your sweet self two years ago would stare a little blankly at, blinking in half-recognition.
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And in between all that flitting, like a rock dropping, you find yourself sitting in silence, your tongue at rest. These stretches of time— they seem so precious, so slipping, and you are struck with the almost infinite possibilities of what you could be doing. Here is the age where you are supposed to be doing everything. You wonder if you should be catching up with your piling to-do list, glide your fingers over the refresh buttons of your innumerable screens. You could go several days— several weeks— without ever having to speak to anyone, if you so chose.

So, you’re like— Well, what do I do now?
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Sitting with yourself makes tenfold apparent the groupings and pairings, or singularities, of everyone else passing by.

A mother and daughter walked by the window where I sit, sipping hot chocolate from small turquoise tin cups. A man with a marvellous Russian-style brown fur coat walks by with immeasurable swagger; my gaydar sounds. The child seated beside me says Boom, right on as she sets down her plastic spoon with all the vigor she can muster in her young fist. The dad says This is sugar. This is full sugar. You’re adding more sugar, and he lets his daughter have the hot chocolate and monster cookie and answers her questions on how handcuffs work, patiently and thoroughly. People are so good. We try to be. It’s a big undertaking, being a human. How does anyone do it?

I’ve not got the foggiest. The beauty of a college town — everyone’s learning. A bearded guy dances by, pumping his arms and singing a tune I can almost discern through the glass. He smiles wider, showing his beautiful teeth as I smile for him— isn’t it wonderful how some people are born performers? Two boys ride in parallel on the main rode, keeping on the right side; one on a skateboard, the other on a OneWheel; feats of extraordinary balance. What artistes!


Last night I finished Ross Gay’s second iteration of his project The Book of Delights; The Book of (More) Delights. I wonder what he will name the third, and more. The Book of (More and More) Delights? I had the good fortune of going to his reading in my first year here and his writing reminds me so much of what a joy it is to be able to experience the small, teensy, pleasures of living. To find remarkableness in the snow on the pavement, the overkill, exuberant hats on the heads of passersby, the two-hand wave. It’s so easy to look past it sometimes.

Solitude is what we are born with. You’ve heard it before, born alone, die alone, and you’ve seen that graph: as we grow older, the person we spend the most time with is ourselves.

I’ve never been one to fear being alone. In trying to make the most, take the most of best four years of your life! and surrounding myself with folks however I can, in whatever capacity, there have been moments where I feel as though I’ve forgotten how I used to be just me. But these moments of solitude aren’t gaps— they’re life. People will pass in and out of the café like squalls in jazz, having their conversations, some will touch you on the shoulder, some you will smile at, some will hold your gaze for seconds more than anticipated, and then you’ll never see each other again.

You are the constant.

Caught with stark independence, you are thrust into daylight. It’s a little bright; the wind is brisk. The air is fresh and cold, the sound of your footsteps something that has followed you from the beginning. You keep moving, eyes open.

I’m going to have a meal with myself now. I’ll extend the invite to you, too; you eating a separate meal, in a separate place, enjoying yourself and what is in front of you. Take yourself on dates. I say thank you, but thank yourself also, please, for being here.