“What if we moved back to New South? Would that be amazing, or just horrific?” asked my roommate one night as we walked back from the cafeteria. Devoted New South ex-residents, we began reminiscing about the fun we’d had there—being thrown in the shower at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday, the time the tile fell from the bathroom ceiling into the toilet, Sunday morning (OK, afternoon) brunch in our pajamas recapping the evening before.
But I realize that there was so much about being a first-year that I didn’t understand then. After graduating from a small, academically rigorous high school, I thought that balancing the aspects of my life at Georgetown would be no problem—I’d maintain focus while having fun. Looking back, I laugh at the path my “balance” took as it wove back and forth, resembling a sine graph as variables I’d thought I’d already tamed changed the equation.
Being new characterizes every battle the first-year faces. Though it might be an old scene, it’s being played out on a very fresh stage, which quickly makes balance impossible to attain. In high school, one can maintain an equilibrium between the three main facets of life-family, school, and friends-at home. While home may not be the easiest place to live, it’s a familiar place. My mom may nag me, but she’s the mother I’ve known and loved forever. Families provide a constant in the lives of teens. Whether that constant is positive, neutral or even negative depends, but it’s a constant nonetheless. Beyond that, home provides the axis for everything we do; it’s a place in which we are used to acting.
When the backdrop of the first-year’s life changes from this constant to a place where little is familiar, it throws everything else into a state of chaos. Challenges faced at home without breaking a sweat now seem mountainous—there is no ground on which to stand. At home, if all else failed, there was always some sort of comfort to which I could turn. Though my sanctuaries changed over the years, I never lacked one. Whether it was a hug from my mom or dad, a nap in my room, a solitary drive, a frequented caf? or my best friend’s house it was always a place to go when support was vital.
Before second semester rolls around, little is constant. Daily life eventually begins to take shape, but little foundation exists on which to find solace when support and comfort are necessary. As a result, there’s no way for a straight line to come out. It’s still all sines and cosines.
There’s always something to cling to, though. These buoys take different forms for different people, but they are always there. For some, they are constant keg parties and drunken stupors. For others, schoolwork and life plans prove the easy thing to cling to. Still others choose to burrow into life at home, seldom putting down the cell phones that connect them to their families. I held on to the things I knew could be handled—classes and activities. The details that had filled my life in high school provided the consistency I needed for my first few months here. After hiding out in the library and over-involving myself at the SAC Fair to compensate for my lack of immediate and supportive connections, I finally became happy only after admitting my unhappiness. Through vulnerability came the connections I’d craved. So zen. But as essential to survival as they are, they can’t provide the basis for a life here that we all need.
Until a life at Georgetown comes to provide the sanctuaries, the solace, the support and comfort that we find at home, real balance is nearly impossible to attain. It wasn’t until I was able to feel comfortable at Georgetown itself that I stopped clinging to the details that filled it. When I came back to school for my third semester, it may not have felt like coming home-my white house with the high hedges in the hills of Portland will always be home for me-but it was comfortable and safe, filled with supportive friends and sanctuaries galore. And once I could step back, balance appeared out of nowhere, most likely because I was no longer forcing nor expecting it.
Julia Cooke is a sophomore in the College. If she were to start smoking cigarettes, she would not be able to stop on principle.
