Duke in Durham

Duke in the fall is my favorite time of the year. The temperature has finally cooled down, the leaves are turning and there’s Duke football every Saturday. When I look back on it, many of my best college memories happened first semester. Freshman fall I was meeting new friends, and sophomore fall I was reuniting with friends. However, junior year I find myself sitting alone at lunch checking Facebook. I see my friends adorned in dirndls for Oktoberfest, going shirtless in the Whitsunday Islands and cheering on F.C. Barcelona in an enormous stadium in Spain. For a “Duke in Durham” junior, it’s sometimes hard to recognize this school with 523 of my classmates missing. The reality is it’s a much different place.

The decision to go abroad or stay in Durham is easy for many juniors (of the 547 undergraduates away this semester, 523 of them are juniors). Going to an exotic location to attend an often times easier school with your best friends is not a hard sell to most 20-year-olds. Not to mention the benefits of an international education. The semester away will lead you on a journey of personal growth, assimilation into another culture and, obviously, a hell of a time. Students often cite their abroad experience as one of the most influential time periods of their lives. But nobody really talks about the experiences of those students who choose to stay behind.

The “Duke in Durham” juniors have a story to tell, too. My experience so far has been one of personal growth, adventure and also having a hell of a time just like my classmates abroad. I’ve discovered a different Duke. I used to walk around campus saying hi to people left and right eating lunch with different people everyday. Now, I feel like the new kid at school. Luckily, there are upsides to being the new kid. One being that there are so many people to meet. Staying in Durham has brought me closer to people I never would have hung out with when the rest of the Class of 2017 was here. It has forced me to approach people I don’t know and engage them in conversation. Having to push myself socially has been something I haven’t done since freshman year when no one knew anyone and we were all looking for friends. In a lot of ways, junior year is similar to that experience. If my friends were on campus, I would not be nearly as outgoing and willing to enter into these new friendships. I now know a solid number of students in the sophomore and senior classes and that’s because I’ve been forced to become a more open person.

Junior fall also is a time to try new things. Because I have fewer social obligations to my 2017 friends, I’ve found that this is a time for many to expand extra-curricular commitments on campus. One friend is volunteering at an elementary school, another joined Inside Joke and another is now doing research in a lab. Without the stark change from last semester, there would not be the time, and therefore freedom, for people to expand their Duke horizons.

However, the old things are still good. Staying in Durham allows you to enjoy the activities you have always loved about Duke. For example, this year I have been able to attend every home football game and religiously follow the team. Also, I can continue to enjoy the luxury of having Monuts, Bull City Burger and Dame’s a quick bike ride away (last time I checked, they don’t have those in Italy). Better yet, I get to wake up every morning and walk by the beautiful Chapel, a place I know I’ll miss when I leave Duke, construction or not. Friends abroad always comment about how much they miss the little things that we, “Duke in Durham” students, take for granted: Quenchers after the gym, Wednesday night Shooters, the swingy benches and a beautiful, southern fall day.

Often times, the reasons Duke students stay on campus junior fall are because of grades, finances or major requirements. I stayed because I truly love being at Duke. We get eight semesters to be American college students, and these eight semesters are going by way faster than I ever could have imagined. Why would I give up a semester? As I sit here stressing about my upcoming week of three midterms, I enviously think of my friends on a white beach in Australia, mojitos in hand, and I wonder why I opted out of an incredible abroad experience. However, when I think about it, I didn’t opt out of an abroad experience at all. I opted into Duke in Durham and, in it’s own way, Duke in Durham is an abroad experience. I’m meeting new people, trying new things and learning a lot about myself, just like my classmates in another country. Junior fall has been one of my best semesters at Duke so far, and it is just getting started.

Eddie Hanlon is a Trinity junior. This column is the fourth installment in a semester-long series of biweekly Thursday columns written by members of Peer for You. Message a peer responder anytime and receive a response within 24 hours.