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After the sheer exhaustion of completing my final run of midterms and papers, I should have been absolutely ecstatic to return home for Thanksgiving break. But the thought of exchanging pleasantries and maintaining false pretenses filled me with a sense of quiet dread. I couldn’t help but think after the millionth rendition of “How’s college going? It’s great! Thanks for asking,” that all I wanted to do was run away from everything.
My senior year has not been what I expected. For some reason, I entered the fall semester with grand visions of fun, friends and carefree days of savoring the treasures of Duke and Durham. I imagined living off campus to be a great new adventure that would offer me a new space of expression.
Last week I had an anxiety attack.
I really, really love airplane mode. I know it’s weird; I know it’s random, but when my phone is on airplane mode it means either one of two things. One, I am traveling internationally, meandering through new and exciting places armed with not much more than the ability to communicate through charades and pre-loaded Google Maps. Or two, I am disconnecting from the world and giving myself a way to be totally and completely alone. The latter is a habit I picked up from this summer, specifically a weekend when I suddenly found myself in more solitude than I even knew existed.
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.
As I walked to the Allen Building for my next class, my friend from freshman year recounted her experiences as a tour guide and all of the over-zealous “p-froshes” that bombard her with questions on the one-hour staged representation of Duke, minimizing its flaws and praising its successes. I asked her if she ever had a prospective student or a question that stopped her in her tracks. She thought for a while, looked up and said, “Yes, actually yesterday.” It was a high-school junior, doe-eyed and amazed by our institution and all that it has to offer. But she looked at my friend and asked, “Do you ever struggle with the concept of effortless perfection on this campus?” It was a question that prompted a mechanical response refuting its existence on our campus.
I will openly admit that I bawled multiple times during the Pixar movie “Inside Out.” And I don’t just mean a little emotional tear here or there; I’m talking about huge, heaving sobs punctuated by dramatic gasps for air. I imagine the parents sitting near me were huddling to shield their 8-year-olds from the disruptive woman seemingly experiencing a mental break down while watching colorful animated figures swirl across the screen.
Before campus was filled with the new semester mantra of “how was your summer?”, the tranquility of a deserted Duke was disrupted by the laughs of eight to ten year old girls. I had an atypical O-Week; I spent it volunteering at the FEMMES summer camp, which is dedicated to fostering an interest in science, math and engineering in young girls. As entertaining as they were, boy, do they have an excess of energy. If we weren’t constantly moving around or amusing them in some way, the cries of “I’m bored” were widespread. So naturally, I showed up to camp each morning with an iced latte from Joe Van Gough to try to even out the playing field and keep up with my rambunctious campers. While one eight year-old struggled to pronounce “latte,” the others began interrogating me on my caffeine consuming habits. “How many coffees a day do you drink at school? One? Two?” “Yeah, usually one or two is enough,” I replied. Lies. Three tends to be the average number I gravitate towards as the semester drags on. Sometimes four if it’s a particularly rough week. “Too much caffeine is bad for you,” another nine year-old warned me. I secretly panicked. I hope they can’t tell I’m lying. But sure enough, within a minute, the conversation had deviated towards the need for playgrounds on Duke’s campus (seriously).
