Cassidy Arrington
It is difficult for me to remember what the magic of Yale used to feel like, to reminisce on something that I have already begun to forget. In this year of global tragedy and deep personal isolation, it only comes to me in glimpses — the sunlight brushing through the dappled light green leaves, a suspense of helicopter seeds pulling the campus into a slow trance, the way that students crop up in the grass on Cross Campus to bask in the sun, relishing in the rare luxury of being among while not having to be with.
I have spent this year chasing that feeling, and more often than not, failing deeply to recreate some semblance of what used to be. The Yale I remember was a place where you could walk across campus to an arpeggio of hellos, where you could enter into a dining hall alone and exit with a gaggle of friends to create the evening with. It was, in the way that colleges and young adulthood can be, a place that cloaks young people with an invincibility of sorts — not equally applied to all and certainly a privilege, but existing in some form or another — to risk and alcohol and experimentation. It is a promise that we will be forgiven or forgive ourselves for our own recklessness. It is a promise that we can, for once in a society that thrives on and continually promotes stability, take risks.
There are times when I wonder whether we are allowed this moment, this magic, as a reprieve from the decades of stable life that lie before many of us. Four years of freedom in exchange for an adulthood dedicated to the pursuit of a stable 9 to 5 and employer-provided healthcare. College, while not an experience that all young adults choose — or can choose — to go through, has become more of a cultural rite-of-passage than an academic or credentialed pursuit. In short, it has been crafted as a moment of bountiful reprieve so that we will not resent the monotonous stability of the rest of our lives. Maybe I am cynical about adult life; although, it is more possible that I am merely afraid. Afraid of losing the constant opportunity and ability to try on new versions of oneself, of being removed from a place with thousands of potential friends to be made. Afraid of never feeling this same kind of magic again that is so intrinsically centered in this place and time and set of people, of searching for a version of it for the rest of my life and coming up empty handed, again and again.
I have already begun to miss Yale — not as an institution, to be clear, but as a particular moment in time in which I am here, in this place, with this particular set of people and our collective experience. In many ways, the magic of this place lies in our conscious choice to embrace its norms: an openness to unexpected friendships, a boldness in exploring new interests, a willingness to push aside stability to create room for surprise. A dear friend recently reminded me that Yale, youth, and the bravery of one’s youth, are but a mindset. She reminded me that it can be carried away from this place, even if you can’t run upstairs to ask your best friend to indulge you on a midnight adventure or meet a new rotation of fascinating people each semester.
I’m sure that it will take more effort to recreate the magic of this place. But I’m also sure that she must be right. The abundance of this place can be nurtured in each of the small corners of the world that we are each preparing to depart to, to attempt to recreate into some semblance of the home that we have discovered here. I, for one, will be chasing that feeling for the rest of my life — planting seeds of it in the next phase of my life, seeking to recreate the magic that I once knew.
Katherine Hu is a graduating senior in Ezra Stiles College. She was Opinion editor for the News during the 2018 – 2019 school year. Contact her at katherine.hu@yale.edu.