Maple leaves floating in the wind each carry their own story. Fall announces itself with the usual signs—I know by the familiar scent of pumpkin spice and those chic wool sweaters.
I snag a leaf drifting through the air and crunch it in my hand.
In less than nine months, I will walk up the stairs in McBride Court, diploma in hand, closing the first chapter of my life.
School has started, and I find myself being torn between two worlds: craving routine and the familiarity of my friends, yet refusing to accept that my last predictable summer is already behind me.
In less than nine months, I will walk up the stairs in McBride Court, diploma in hand, closing the first chapter of my life. I’ve always pictured my life following a strict trajectory: graduate, go to college, work, retire, in the end having done better than my parents.
But I never considered how much of my identity was anchored right here, inside the routine I was ready to abandon, rooted in the few friends who became brothers and the frantic mornings scrambling to finish homework.
It isn’t pure dread that I feel; it’s an uncertainty that underlines the clear future I’d promised myself and my parents. Yet I also see a fresh opportunity for renewal in the inevitability of meeting entirely different people and learning how to navigate the world beyond Lancaster Avenue.
We stormed into the theater the way flocks of teenagers usually do—unannounced, loud, and hyper.
It’s not that I’ll forget Haverford and the people who built me but simply that the world is vast, and I long to broaden my perspective.
Maybe this push for autonomy and change has distanced me from the point of it all: the journey. I remember watching, after some disagreement, Spiderman: Brand New Day with friends. They had planned this only thirty minutes prior, but I did what I do best: started the minivan and picked everyone up one by one until we were shoulder-to-shoulder, looking like the cast of the movie ourselves.
We stormed into the theater the way flocks of teenagers usually do—unannounced, loud, and hyper. Yet, even while watching the movie (and enjoying every minute), I couldn’t stop thinking about how they were slowly slipping out of reach. It felt like one of the last spontaneous memories I might share with them before I’m off to college, slowly forgetting their faces and voices.
So what is this retrospective really about? For me, it’s about slowing down and inhabiting the present, rather than sacrificing the moment to college anxiety or a desperate need for certainty. I am fortunate enough to have the room to choose, to fail, and to try again, even if my parents view success differently.
And maybe you should, too.
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