To all of my friends and family, have you ever noticed how the people we are together are so different from the people we are when we\u2019re apart? Life feels so unusual and yet so the same whenever I leave school and go back home, or leave home and go back to school. I know coming back to the people I know and love and care about is great, but sometimes I wonder how I can be a different person at home from the person I am at school, but both people can still be me. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m any less happy at one place or the other; I\u2019m just different. Being at school makes me want to write and read and hang out with friends in trendy coffee shops while we plan our escape to Alaska. Being at home makes me want to paint and explore and lay around in bed with my dog and the small cluster of high school friends who I can still call mine while we plan our escape to Alaska.<\/p>\n
Hey, on a side note, does anyone want to go to Alaska? No reason just wondering.<\/p>\n
Okay, back to my profound musings on the strange internal and external changes that come about when you change the people you\u2019re with and the location you\u2019re with them. I\u2019ve been thinking about all of these things, and I know I can\u2019t be the only one. Do you ever get lonely surrounded by friends because you realize those aren\u2019t the friends you\u2019re used to being with? It\u2019s not a sad kind of lonely, just an outsider kind of lonely. Sometimes that happens to me after a long break like this. I come back to school and I\u2019m bouncing with joy to see everyone, but it\u2019s just slightly off. I used to think it was just a product of the changing scenery, but now I think it\u2019s a product of the changing scenery and getting older.<\/p>\n
Getting older is what people say when they\u2019ve gotten older, which is kind of funny. When we were younger we\u2019d hear about people getting older all the time, but it didn\u2019t really mean anything. They\u2019d tell us we\u2019d have the best times ahead of us, our whole futures, until one day those best times, those futures, would become pasts, memories, photographs in dusty frames. That thought used to make me sad, but not anymore. You see, you don\u2019t have to be so happy you could do somersaults all the time. Everyone gets sad sometimes and I think it\u2019s good to acknowledge that, especially when you\u2019re stuck in the newfound-college-break-boredom of our parents\u2019 houses. We can take this time for break to recuperate, spend time with our home friends and family, but in the end, we\u2019re still going back. And after that, we\u2019ll be going someplace else. And that\u2019s all a part of life. And we\u2019re all so lucky to have these opportunities to become different people when we go different places, but to always remain ourselves.<\/p>\n
So because I know how very special it is to have people who help me be all the different forms of me, I want to say a few things.<\/p>\n
To the students still finishing up the semester, I wish you good luck and happy post-exam frolicking. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll kill it.<\/p>\n
To my professors this semester, thank you. It really and truly was an excellent term and that\u2019s largely because of you.<\/p>\n
To my school friends, whether I met you in Ann Arbor, Oxford, or Chamonix, thank you. That other humongous part of having an excellent term was all due to you. You make going to school fun and educational for wholly different reasons than the ones I attribute to my professors.<\/p>\n
To my home friends, thank you. You always make coming home rewarding and strange, but fun all the same. I know I can always count on you to visit me in Ann Arbor when I really need you, or to at least send a hilarious gif to pick my spirits up.<\/p>\n
To my family, you\u2019re weird and fantastic and you should know that I love you for making me weird and fantastic, too.<\/p>\n
To everyone else reading, maybe one day we\u2019ll meet and you can help me become a different me, too. If not, you\u2019ve helped someone else become different forms of themselves, and I know they are grateful to have known you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To all of my friends and family, have you ever noticed how the people we are together are so different from the people we are when we\u2019re apart? Life feels so unusual and yet so the same whenever I leave school and go back home, or leave home and go back to school. I know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2179,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[899,898,432],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7099,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions\/7099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}