Of Bears and Penguins

House Cleaning, an introspective, journal type entry:

It seems like I’m always leaving Texas…I hope that someday I’ll be back here for more than a few weeks or months at a time. But before I come back to Columbia there are some thoughts I need to clean out, just so I can have a fresh start there.

London was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I’ll be honest, in a lot of ways I went to London because I needed to be out of Columbia for awhile. And it’s only been with in the past 3 months that I’ve really been ready to come back. That being said, I’m excited to see the people I’ve been missing and to be starting with a nearly clean slate.

FARC is really the only home I’ve ever known in Columbia. I didn’t live in FARC my freshman year – but there was one night in winter. I came out of Loeb Hall after a band rehearsal. It was cold, crisp and getting late. As I walked past the front doors and windows of FARC, I could see that the lobby was darkened and Jim Widner and his combo were playing to a packed house. I could hear the music and I stood in the cold and listened. To see one of the biggest musical influences in my life, playing to a group of people my age…the smile on the band’s faces, looking at everyone gathered... I stood there for a long time, wishing that I could be walking into McDavid and calling it home. I was so jealous, and I just stood there, feeling like that’s where I should have been. Eventually I walked on back to 528 Hudson Hall, but I didn’t leave easily.

I got so lucky…I didn’t want to teach a FIG, I wanted to be a CA over in Johnston. But I landed in FARC…exactly where I belonged. For two years, one of the best feelings I had was coming down the hill from the quad, seeing McDavid and knowing I was coming home.

FARC is different now, of course, and in a good way, I’m sure. Because it belongs now to different people, who are creating and living and sharing themselves and investing in a community. Because more than the community goals or the building, it is the people who make it an amazing place to live.

Some of the most important relationships in my life are ones that started in the hallways of McDavid.

Tennyson wrote, “I am a part of all that I have met.” So, I like to believe that my experience in FARC is as much a part of the building as it is a part of me.