When I first walked into my Duchesne dorm room, it smelled like someone else’s laundry. Its prison-like walls were marked scratches that promised a story, and so did the dented door. I had inherited just half of it for a year. But I pretended like it had been mine all along.
I’m a better person in New York City—more optimistic, kinder, and more relaxed. These qualities are probably the exact opposite of how the average person would describe NYC. The city’s constant, insatiable noise and energy are stressful for most, but, for me, they absorb my worries right up.
“Who decides what comfort is, anyway?” I find myself asking this when one of the students from Upper makes fun of my current living situation.
There is something deeply soothing about uncomfortability.
Through challenging my insecurities head-on, I’ve grown to derive more fun from the things that I used to hold myself back from in fear. Seeing each interaction as “for the bit” makes life so much more interesting.
If you had asked me a year ago to define what home meant to me, I would tell you it was the winding back roads that I spent endless hours driving down with my best friends.
When we act as deipnosophists, we understand the importance of talking during a meal. We take what is already great about food—both the comforting and symbolic aspects—and make it better by adding meaning to the otherwise casual, surface-level conversation.
