Personal Insights/Wramblings on Life

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This trip has helped me realize that there is so much out there in the world and that there is so much substance to be experienced and lived in such a short lifetime. In reflecting back on my past year at Georgia Tech, I’ve come to realize that I have been living the college life. Georgia Tech has been my life. My relationships, interactions, investments, and time have all been contained within the institution of Georgia Tech. My life has been my university. This distance I have had between myself and the Georgia Tech I have built for myself has helped me to realize that what I really need is not a life in Georgia Tech, but a life in which Georgia Tech plays a part. Instead of college being my life, I need to build a life into which I fit college. Or at least that has been my thinking as of late.

So what does this really mean? This means that I feel I have been limiting myself in the past year by engaging in experiences solely through my university and in living and breathing through the university. While investing in an education is a very important and valuable thing to do, you are ultimately in the business of creating your life, and if you haven’t carved out your little niche in the world, the big world, then you end up carving a little niche in a much smaller world of the university. Maybe we all need these smaller worlds to retreat to where things are familiar, where we have an impact in our immediate community. But I am arguing that I need to expand my community, expand my home and look beyond the walls I put up myself a year ago. If I do not know where it is in this world I fit and if I do not know the life I wish to live, then I am trapping myself in effect in a fishbowl, a fishbowl inside of the ocean—the water is warm, the settings familiar, my neighbors well known, but there is so much water yet to be swam through.

So how do I go about making my life into which I fit college? Well, clearly removing myself from the college setting has helped immensely, having given me the opportunity to grow and experience while learning simultaneously and feel the larger global community of which I am a part. I think that part of being a member of this global community need be continued upon my return to Atlanta by investing my talents and skills into the community in which I live, maybe even into a community in which I am different and uncomfortable—for that is what I crave and love about traveling, the exposure to the new and the unknown, learning from it, and incorporating it into my understanding. Maybe I create my own life by physically moving outside of the college world, separating what I do with my private life from what I do in my school life. I think that separation would greatly help investments outside of the classroom be placed in areas outside of the university for when living within the university the object is always to improve your home (the university), be a part of the community (of the university), and change the world through the university.

I always thought that people were crazy when they said college isn’t the “real world,” but I am beginning to think that maybe some of them are right in one way or another. You see, college itself isn’t a world unless you make it one, and if you make it your world, then no, it isn’t like life. But I think many people are okay making college their life, whether they realize it or not, as I myself have fallen pray to this misconception. Then again, I highly doubt many people have the same view of the world as I do and maybe it is in human nature to twiddle our world down into sizable chunks in which we can comfortably operate. College isn’t the “real world,” but it is a part of it. The journey I am embarking on, the journey I have been on my whole life whether I realized it or not, is to open my eyes to what this world is and to open my life to embrace it. What a scary notion and what a daunting task but what a dreadfully exciting mission.

Well, life, I know you’ve been waiting for me, and here I come. So in six months, when I’m sitting again at this computer, stressing out about my coursework, how I am going to make all of my organization meetings, and when I am going to cook dinner, remind me of this trip, remind me of this feeling, and help me get back on the roller coaster of life no matter what lies ahead.

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