Every year, I find myself a little sad to be leaving home. I pack my bags, say goodbye to my family, then dutifully board my plane headed east. The flight from Portland to Chicago to South Bend always feels a bit strange, right up until that familiar wind of the road back onto campus.
Then it feels suddenly like I haven’t been away all that long after all.
There’s something so simple and wonderful about opening my door to find my roommate smiling and saying hello to me, or my suitemate popping into our room to give me a hug. It’s become a bit of a routine to put away all of my books, hang up my pictures and pack my bag for my classes in the morning.
Over the course of the next few days, I met friends new and old (some of whose faces I saw for the first time ever–how bizarre!). Although COVID continues on, the steps forward from Zoom classes at home to sitting three seats away in the classroom, then sitting next to someone at dinner, have given me a dose of human connection I haven’t felt for a long time.
The first week of school offered its fair share of challenges and triumphs, from navigating one of the longest chemistry labs I’ve ever experienced to getting to watch the newest manifestations in the Marvel universe with friends. There were little moments of joy that stemmed from unexpectedly catching familiar faces at breakfast and coming up with a particularly good response to a discussion question in my English Literature to 1600 class. I’ve loved the aspects of community that came from attending my first in-person departmental assembly in over a year just as much as meeting some of my favorite people for supper and talking for hours into the night.
I imagine that the rest of this semester will be a host unto itself for every Andrews student this year–full of valuable moments with friends and lazy walks in the sunshine, as well as dreaded days of tests and that famous, omnipresent Michigan cold. I’ll hold onto these two weekends’ worth of wading into Lake Michigan on a Saturday afternoon and gathering with friends to eat Baguette at Wolf’s Prairie Park. I look forward to more of those experiences in the future, wherever and whenever they may come.
Time passes quickly here, however, and before I know it, two weeks will turn into a month, then into two months, then into three–and soon I’ll be back on a plane from South Bend to Chicago to Portland, a little sad to leave Andrews. Perhaps life is made up of those simple things, gathered week to week and made into something memorable and incredibly precious. I’m doing my best to find and keep as many as I can.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.