So much to say about where I’ve been. ... but I still find myself talking about Middlebury!
Here I am in a funky New Zealand surfing town with an equivalent population to Middlebury. To my great surprise, Dalal Al-Abdulrazzak ’07, a classmate and Watson Fellow peer, and I ended up on the north island of New Zealand at the same time. We are spending a weekend in this coastal town sharing our project experiences and crazy travel stories, of course—but we keep coming back to nostalgic conversation about Middlebury. So, I decided it was about time to send a note back to the College on the Hill.
The sun has barely been visible this weekend—there is a thick coat of clouds and fairly constant drizzle. It’s a rather depressing but much-needed dampness because this area has faced a drought for the past six weeks. The rain has also given Dalal and I the perfect excuse to take over the corner couches in the Fair Trade coffee shop, “Tongue and Groove,” and recollect and analyze a thousand aspects of Middlebury for hours.
It has been draining, but wonderful ... draining, because both of us have only thought about Middlebury for at least six months, or spoken briefly to people who have never been to Vermont and just don’t understand the magic. Then all of a sudden, we find each other in New Zealand and we are talking, laughing—even tearing up—as we purge so many memories at once.
I’m so glad we know so many of the same professors so we can gush about their intellectual and personal qualities, and laugh at their quirks. We describe our favorite food at Atwater dining hall; we talk about how jealous we are of the incoming students who will have even more new buildings and spaces in town to use and have no idea how world-class the resources are around them; but mostly, we miss all of the amazing people we met. I like to think I always appreciated it while I was there, but now that I’ve graduated and I’m halfway around the world, my love for Midd has been reinforced and spread to new dimensions. I also have witnessed, on a global level, how rare it is to look upon college years with such joy and appreciation.
While traveling, I have met a few American Peace Corps volunteers who appreciated their liberal arts colleges comparable to Midd, but not even a handful of people from other countries who could grasp the diversity of extracurricular activities in such a small place or students’ freedom to take elective courses or change your major during your first few years. In Japan, I showed a young Slavic man the virtual tour on the Middlebury Web site after he had heard enough of my stories to be completely enthralled with the concept of a liberal arts college in a rural area. As we were clicking through the pictures, he said, “I am so jealous! Do you understand how lucky you are? I wish I went to Middlebury!”
He later asked me what the best thing about it was. I told him, “Honestly, when else will you ever be in the midst of an isolated, high-quality pool of bright, attractive people in your age demographic?! It is unreal.”
It certainly seems unreal to me right now, as I have a chance to reflect upon and discuss how important and formative it was. At the moment, I have got to get off to the coffee shop, where I am looking forward to getting my “Midd fix” with Dalal. Finding Midd alums around the world could get addicting. [wink]