Environmental Literature was a way to skip out on taking a science class my senior year in high school. It was the slacker option for seniors, frequented by those lacking the grades or the motivation to take something more difficult. However, it was while reading Aldo Leopold, Ed Abbey and Annie Dillard that I realized how important my environment and sense of place is to me.
And I have destroyed it.
Not in the sense of global warming or deforestation, or any of the other pressing problems that need to be dealt with by the world community. No, I destroyed my sense of place through work, college, and travel, and in the process became, in a way, homeless.
A nomad is someone who “wanders from place to place” according to the dictionary; a person who is lacking a permanent home.
I live in a three-bedroom apartment with two roommates. My lease will be up in June, when I’ll move into a three-bedroom house with the same two roommates. Our lease will again expire the next June as we graduate college and are thrown our different ways into the world.
My house in Dayton, where my family lives, is no longer my home. It hasn’t been since I left there in September of 2005 and moved into the dorms for the first time. It wasn’t simply that my parents knocked out the wall of my room and combined it with my younger sister’s, leaving me the guest bedroom in the basement, it was the awful foreboding sense that as soon as I walked out that door with my stuff packed, I would never be coming home in the same way again.
This summer, I spent two months living and working in Cairo, Egypt. It too, was a temporary home, one that I learned to love and hate as is common to every place. And then I left, to come back to the United States, back to Dayton, back to school.
And even now, when I am relatively settled, my work life and school life keeps me away from my apartment more hours than I am there. So it feels more like a convenient place to crash than a home.
I have heard from many people that Junior year of college is stressful, difficult, and hard. They haven’t being lying – more than once I’ve wanted to drop out of school and start working, if just for a change of pace. As a good friend of mine put it, by this point we’ve gotten good at school. We know how to handle the classes, how to study, how to write papers, how to procrastinate. Our classes may be hard, but school is no longer hard. In essence, we’re ready for a different kind of challenge.
The bottom line is that right now I don’t fit in. I’m happy to be back, but am also looking ahead to the next trip I’m planning. I hear my friends talk about graduation and jobs and the next step in their lives. And when I do I inwardly curse the extra year I have to flounder and feel frustrated.
The contemporary Bedouin of the Sinai bemoan the loss of their nomadic ways, having to settle in order to make lives for themselves and their families. I feel for them, because at the end of the day, after I work and I study and I sit down, there’s still something left. I’m still just restless.
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3 comments:
Good post. It pretty much sums up the way every college kid feels (specifically junior year). Keep up the interesting blog, I want to see what happens to Nomad next.
Love your blog. I was only an undergraduate a few months ago and I completely agree. I also felt the same way about my parents home in Georgia. Reality smacked me in the face when I came "home" for winter break and found that my mom converted my room into her own personal dressing room/office. (Mind you we already have an office.)
Now that I'm in graduate school, according to your definitions, I am still homeless. However, I know that if life ever dealt blows so tough that I couldn't handle it on my own, I can find comfort with my family, where ever there physical home may be. Just something to think about ;)
A: Interesting article. Thanks for the link to the photos. Always longing for where you are going while being ill at ease with where you are is sad in some ways. Soon your college years will be behind you. Never again in your life will you be in a position to, for the most part, do what you want, when you want. You can say and do just about anything. Other than your class schedule, you answer to no one. Being comfortable with going to new places is a great skill. Being able to find some good in where you are is a skill worth having too. Enjoy this year and your senior year. I would advise against wishing for time to go by. It has a propensity to go pretty fast on its own accord. And it has been said that it is like paper on a roll. The less there is, the faster it goes.
As far as being homeless is concerned, you still have one. You actually might have two. The Dayton home you claim is not yours anymore. It is yours but it is not the same home you left. You have changed. But, those who stayed behind changed as well. Sometimes when we go off to college, we are shocked when we come home and things are different. It is like you assumed that somehow time would stop when you left for college and would start up again upon your return. You have discovered that is not the case. It is not the same, because you are not the same. That is how it is supposed to work.
You say you do not fit it. Why not? Into what mold are you trying to fit yourself? And agaist what standard are you judging yourself?
I guess I would say relax. Soon, the change of pace you so desperately seek will be at your door step. You will be presented with other challenges and hardships. This is a great time in your life. To realize that 10 or 20 years after the fact would be a travesty indeed.
You have not destroyed your sense of place through college. You are defining it.
LYB
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