The source of the noise was a member of my first-year seminar, but no more than an acquaintance.  She was sporting a bright pink bikini, a ski helmet, goggles and the furriest boots I had seen since arriving at Midd as a first-year not more than two months before.  It had already been a non-descript week night, the kind where Chinese homework, 5:00 dinner and astronomy lab all mesh together to form one long block of time capable of sufficiently making me exhausted to the point where it was not hard to want to pass out for a good week.  So yes, it was my gut and not my common sense that responded to the voice instead of tuning it out.

I soon learned that she was from Southern California, San Diego specifically.  And the raucous she was causing was because although she had gone on a couple ski trips with her parents, if she hadn’t been able to trust what others had told her then she must have been in disbelief when snow started to fall from the sky. 

What made her decide to change into her present outfit is another story.  But what made me decide to join her, well that’s a question we can talk a little about.

In a short time I found myself running around outside in my new friends company, also dressed in similar attire that one might associate more with the beach than Battell Beach.  I suppose that even for me the first snow of the year was an exciting occasion.  As a first-year I was extremely excited to try out skiing for the first time in decent conditions and I had already heard about the type of place Middlebury turns into when the white stuff first arrives.  For lack of a better (and less cheesy) description, it was magical and liberating, and perhaps a little foolish, but for all the right reasons.

And it’s because of this that three years later I found myself running through McCardell Bicentennial Hall wearing very little clothing while announcing to others who are much more hard-working than I am that the first snow of the year had indeed arrived.  It’s the fourth and last time my friend Lizz and I will partake in the tradition and despite the fact that it may seem strange, while making a fool of myself I couldn’t help but feel pretty sentimental. 

There is no doubt in my mind that I am going to have an extremely difficult time saying goodbye to this place.  And perhaps the reason why I am stressing about it now is that everyone around me is applying for jobs, talking about next year and focusing primarily on something they call the “real world.” 

While this is good and all, I can’t help but focus on the present situation and how it is often the stroke of luck (and our ability to trust our gut reaction) that leads us to do great things.  Lizz and I have been incredibly close friends since and had I not decided to be a little crazy, who knows if we would even know each other.

But that’s what I love about Middlebury and how I am going to have such a hard time leaving.  It’s the nonsensical decisions we make and the lessons we learn from them.  It’s the opportunities we have to, in a sense, live a little.  It’s the wind whipping in your face as the first flakes fall around you.

Even after the election is over, the trend towards one political consensus, at least among my friends, does not mean that we have any shortage of conversation or debate over the issues. Somewhere in the middle of schoolwork, loads of clubs and teams, students here find time to read about the different policy proposals and to keep up with post-election developments. During the election, many canvassed for the ticket that they supported. It was not uncommon to hear about students who drove to the battleground state of New Hampshire on the weekends to knock on doors and encourage people to vote for their candidate of choice. A lot of Middlebury students were active in calling undecided voters to talk about why their candidate deserved and needed that voter’s support. The College Dems weekly phone-athons in Hillcrest, and on Election Day, they made 6143 calls from Coltrane Lounge during their “All Day Phone Bank for Barack” event.  

On Tuesday night, I headed down to a packed Grille to join other students and faculty members watching the results as polls started to close. It was exciting to see the results of the election online before they were even announced on major networks that were projected onto large screens on stage. When I arrived, Professors Dickinson and Johnson, both from the Political Science Department, were discussing the merits of McCain’s decision to have Palin as his running mate. Over the course of the night, they announced the results of the presidential election in certain states as students called them out, and they explained the importance of specific Senate and House races this year. Sometimes they even asked students to stop using their laptops because they were overloading the wireless network. The professors could not get online to analyze the data and at one point the projection feed even cut out.

After the results from Ohio came in, Professor Dickinson announced that Barack Obama was our President-elect. This was long before any of the networks called the election. Virtually every student at the Grille cheered when they heard this. Later on that night and the next day, the energy was the same. Not much else seemed to matter. Many of my friends and I had midterms the following night, and needless to say, we did not get a ton of studying done that day.

As college students, I think a lot of us saw our futures tied to the outcome of this election. This is particularly true as many of us graduate in the next year. The fact that Obama is our next president makes some of my friends a little less eager to move abroad after college. For now, I think we’re focusing on how to continue being politically involved, and maybe on plans to attend the Inauguration during J-term.

In the fall of 2006, my first year at Middlebury, a group of us got together on Sunday mornings to combat the ill-effects of a Saturday night by putting on rather haughty clothing and our best British accents as we competed in a rousing round of croquet.  Soon we began to brainstorm about other ways to ensure that we could drag ourselves out of bed before 11:00 and before long, under the leadership of Xander Manshel, we found ourselves with capes on our backs, brooms between our legs and running around Battell Beach chasing our hallmate cross country runner/wrestler Rainey Johnson dressed in yellow. 

All of it generated some buzz, albeit not all positive, but much of it merely dismissing the concept as something “freshmen” do.  Our first World Cup event was later that fall when as a member of the “Falmouth Falcons” our team captured the first trophy (made suggestively out of empty purchases from the liquor store) after a sensational snitch grab by the seeker turned commissioner, Alex Benepe.

The rest, as they say, is history.  This week’s past event included 14 different colleges as far flung as Lousiana State University, the University of Washington and even McGill.  Although I personally have tried to distance myself from the scene a little bit (merely out of respect that I am past my time), our suite agreed to host 11 LSU students for Saturday and Sunday nights.  I actually had no idea what to expect out of them, and probably shouldn’t have been surprised when I found them to be kind, fun-loving and endearing.  They themselves were blown away by Middlebury.  All they did was talk about the breathtaking colors, the quaintness of the town and how friendly everybody was.  Of course we were not without our cultural differences, the best of which was when they knocked on my door at 7:30 A.M. Sunday morning, dressed in their Sunday best, asking me where the nearest Catholic church was in town.  So to say the event wasn’t out of the ordinary certainly is a mischaracterization. 

And there is so much to say about it, because it truly does represent some of the best of Middlebury’s creative minds, organizational prowess and sheer sense of fun.  These things are easy enough to tell.  I guess what made me so happy about the event was the way in which I saw the community getting involved.

One of things that first troubled me about Middlebury was that before coming here I had been warned that at times the town-gown relations had been strained in the past.  Because of this, I love going to hockey games and seeing kids that I’ve met at Mary Hogan Elementary wearing the jersey of my really good friend who is the starting goalie, worshipping him like a professional.  I love going to events like Midd-mayhem, an all-campus picnic with rides, games and music, where on a beautiful spring day everybody is outside just enjoying each other’s company. 

That, I think, is what I find so awesome about the Quidditch World Cup.  I saw everyone from my adviser to Provost Tim Spears to the people who I see at Steve’s Park Diner every Friday morning.  It was an event that was about Middlebury, the town and not the college.  It’s easy to lose sight of where we are and for me at least it is such a wonderful thing to both be a part of and also share such a wonderful place with guests from all over the country. 

From something we did to wake ourselves up on Sunday mornings to a community-uniting event.  I suppose that if we look at it this way it’s not hard to appreciate a bunch of kids waddling around on brooms, chasing after a golden snitch, but also perhaps something even more significant to the rest of us. 

P.S.  Check out this video 7 Days Vermont did if you are interested in a more technical description of Quidditch! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kfoEf-R3qY&fmt=18

The Middlebury community feels both bigger and smaller with these changes. I have met new people, even in the space of a few days on campus. These new acquaintances traveled the globe with my friends or are simply the neighbors of my old Ross hall-mates in dorms with which we “Ross Rhinos” were previously unaffiliated. When you consider how many people there are to meet each year, it is astounding, even at a relatively small school. People who were abroad all year seem to feel particularly unfamiliar with the campus community because they know, at best, only half the school. (No small feat!)

Middlebury has many strengths. The classes are terrific (I am deciding what to take from the six courses that I tried out this week), as is the food. In the end though, the sense of community is Middlebury’s best quality. Maybe it’s Vermont or something in the water, but it is hard to believe sometimes how nice people are here.

One complaint that I have heard from friends at other schools is that they do not make friends in their classes. Contrary to these experiences, I have made some of my closest friends this way. Middlebury is not socially restrictive by age or position either. While I tend to “expect the unexpected” with most things at Middlebury (to steal a line from the Village Voice), I know that I can count on meeting new people all the time. One friend recently remarked that she was almost “stressed out by the richness of her social life. There simply is not enough time to talk with everyone!”

This past week, I spent time catching up with my former professors and Commons Faculty Heads, as well as other students and staff members at the College. One of my favorite moments was attending a History Department dinner for seniors thinking about their final academic projects. Despite the fact that many of us were meeting each other and some of the professors for the first time, there was definitely a sense of camaraderie in the room. We discussed ideas for our thesis papers, and then moved on to other topics, such as post-graduation plans and making the History Department feel more cohesive. Professor Tropp brought up the advantage of having a new, central gathering space in the Axinn Center. This can only foster more connections—both academic and social—among students and also between students and professors. I have high hopes for the new academic year!

For one, I returned to find a Middlebury College that physically in many ways did not resemble the home I had stored in my brain as a reminder of my roots. A new building had come to life, a construction site that magically had become a center of liberal-arts life. In that building, a room where time appeared to be playing a joke on itself as first-year fiddled with their new iPods and Blackberries under the watchful eyes of Julian Abernethy (a reference I hope you alumni get).

But while time had brought on the birth of the new, time had caught up to those who tried to outrun it. A dining hall, familiar to all those who are proud to call themselves Middlebury graduates, fell to the chopping block, or as Matthew Biette, head of Dining Services, might say: to the tools of the plastic surgeon. However in its place students now go to a dining hall able to restore its legacy as the provider of all things delicious (read: fried), given of course that enough care has been taken to restore its rightful personality at the same time that it caters to students not looking to gain the “freshman 50.” Indeed for someone who has completely lost their sense of time it is easy get lost when trying to appreciate the death of old things that felt new and the birth of new things that feel old. Not to mention as a senior it is difficult to imagine planning for years that have ones in the tens column.

To be a little less cryptic, the campus has undergone a huge amount of change, even in the short time that I was gone. Proctor, long a safe haven to many is now open to no one (albeit temporarily) and the school is now sporting a shiny new center for environmental studies (Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest) and a renovated center for humanities (old Starr Library now called the Axinn Center).  For those that try to have a sense of time passing on this campus, with so many changes going on its certainly a little unsettling.

Although, because I am learning to face this time crunch I also have come to appreciate all that time has given me just by ignoring it. Perhaps what I have learned the most is in no way do things here move linearly. Time has a way of skipping ahead of itself and even doubling back on its progress in order to catch up to where it needs to be. What I mean is that as a senior I am capable of watching the clock all the way to 0, I have so much more control over how I let time dictate my life that by losing a sense of time things rely on me getting them done and not the passing of minutes.

And it is with that sense of knowing one’s own control, in which I am often happy to tell people that although I would have wanted to let the death of time happen, I feel the need to spare it; at least for just a little longer. At the very least till I decide time and I have come to an agreement on how it’ll treat me and how I’ll treat it.

I had a great summer, but spending all of my time outside of small-town Vermont made writing for this website challenging. After all, it is a blog about Middlebury, as told by me and Sam. Looking back on the last three months as a whole, however, made writing a blog entry much easier. I was far away from Middlebury—spending most of the summer with family in Maryland and in New York—but my thoughts often drifted to life and friends at school. (And not just because I unexpectedly ran into Middlebury graduates in College Park, Maryland, at the Washington Nationals Stadium, and in mid-town Manhattan.)

Taking a course at a large university prompted me to compare the classes there to those at Middlebury. It helped me realize why I believe in a liberal arts education and made me more grateful for the one that I have. Moreover, I was not fully aware of how integrated the community is at Middlebury both in and out of the classroom. Being a commuter student this summer made me feel very differently about living, eating, studying and socializing with so many different people at Middlebury. I am not restricted to the Bihall by the science classes I take (although some may argue with me on that!), nor are my friends necessarily my age or focused only on arts or on athletics. They come from all over the country and the world, with interests and majors as varied as their backgrounds. Being in the same place at the same time really connects the students at Middlebury and makes them invest in campus life—a part of our college experience that I took for granted in the past.

I look forward to the start of the school this year with a mix of excitement and nervousness. As a rising Senior Feb, many of my friends will graduate by the year’s end, either as Super Senior Febs or simply as Seniors. I anticipate that this will really change my time at Middlebury, and might be the reason I feel a little apprehensive about returning to school. That said, the new school year also ushers in a host of new classes, new faces and more new opportunities than I will ever be able to take advantage of. What’s not to like?

As I turned the corner, I made eye contact with the next presumed stranger. Instead, I saw a face that I recognized. Sylvia and I chatted for a few minutes, I met her mother, and we walked away with tentative plans to meet up soon. It was so nice to have the familiarity of both of my “worlds”—Middlebury and New York—all in one moment.

When I first started at Middlebury, I tried to separate the two. I wanted to maintain my city life, but also experience Middlebury to the fullest. My time at Middlebury seemed entirely campus-centered. Two and half years later, my experiences in both places are so intertwined that I cannot imagine putting them into separate categories. My friends from each place know each other, and if not, then at least names and plenty of stories—enough that if these friends were to meet, they would waste little time playing catch up. There are definitely parts of my urban upbringing that I may never adapt to life at Middlebury. I do not always remember that cars will stop for me in Vermont. Sometimes the drivers and I engage in a long waiting game as I stand on the curb, expecting them to pass me first. On the other hand, my penchant for flannel is a little foreign to my friends and family at home. That said, my life at Middlebury and my life at home are now virtually one and the same.

As I look ahead to this summer, I am so grateful that my Middlebury experience is not restricted to life on campus. I am spending the summer in Washington, D.C., a city with which I am unfamiliar. Without realizing it, I chose a city that also has a substantial Middlebury population, at least during the 2008 summer. My community is being transplanted from Middlebury to D.C., and I couldn’t be happier. I am still looking forward to exploring a new city, to being one of those anonymous faces in the rush of urban life, but I will be on the lookout for some familiar Middlebury faces too.

I chuckled as I looked out at my sister’s fenced-in plot of nature. At Middlebury, I have been “introduced” to nature firsthand. I spent my first few semesters admiring the natural beauty from afar—from my room in Ross, overlooking the Champlain Valley and the Adirondacks to the west. I had a few outdoor labs for my first-year seminar, but I think I was too wrapped up in the newness of school to realize what a fantastic opportunity the surrounding areas offered. It was only this year when nature and I finally had a real introduction. I went on my first hike—a great hike—up Camel’s Hump, part of the Green Mountains in Huntington. From the peak you can look across from New Hampshire to New York. It was one of the best days I’ve had in Vermont.

Later in the year, I spent five out of our thirteen lab periods outside for my introductory biology class. During our first lab, we stomped through a few feet of snow into a patch of forest behind Bihall. A few of us seemed to freeze immediately, but when we went out into the snow a few weeks later, we were not as bothered by the cold. This time we explored a part of the forest held by the Middlebury Area Land Trust, a local non-profit land conservation organization. My lab partner and I counted different tree species in our plots to determine the impact of an invasive tree species, European Buckthorn. I had no idea that invasive plants posed such a problem in Vermont. Now I can recognize the native and non-native species and understand what the threat of species displacement means, even on a small-scale.

Once the snow melted, the outdoor labs were truly a blast. We threw on “waders”—either thigh-high or chest-high rubber boots—in order to examine the ecology of the Middlebury River. We walked upstream and downstream, in the sun and in the rain, to observe the variety of aquatic insects and categorize them. My lab partner, another student from a city, showed how out of our element we were when she used her umbrella during lab, even when we strode into the middle of the river. At one point, I even fell in the water (thigh-high waders were of no use then), but it was still a privilege to be at the river. I thought about how fortunate I was to go to a school like Middlebury, to have an experience like this one. Not only was I able to take advantage of the natural beauty around me, but also to do it in my free time and in class. I only hope my sister has the same opportunity as part of her education.  

That I even think of myself right now “here” at Middlebury underscores how Middlebury is more than just a beautiful campus and cozy dorm room looking out at the Green Mountains in Vermont or even a discrete time period of a time. At this moment, I am in Hangzhou, China, spending my winter and spring terms at the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School in China. Though thousands of miles from Middlebury, Vermont, I feel no less a part of the Middlebury campus, and no less close to my friends spread over the globe, much the same way Midd alums are. No doubt being away from Vermont makes me especially appreciative of how for alumni the Middlebury experience can stay with you long after graduation.

Being here in Hangzhou is also a ready reminder of the tremendous influence Middlebury has already had on my life, after only two and one half years. I came to Middlebury with no knowledge of the language of Chinese. Now, I am travelling around China completely conversant in Mandarin and enjoying each and every day of my time here. This summer, I hope to work at the Olympics but also recently received a Midd grant to do environmental research during the summer here for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which will use both my Mandarin and the knowledge I gained this past fall of geographic information systems (GIS) in my geography class (tough, but amazing!). Yes, the classes at Middlebury are demanding (Chinese summer school was brutal!), but the returns are spectacular.

While studying abroad, I’ve also come to appreciate even better the uniqueness of the academic and social environment that Midd provides. Where else do you find undergraduates with limitless opportunities to study with world-famous academics? Where else do you regularly witness and participate in legitimate debates occurring between professors and students, with both sides fairly questioning each other’s reasoning? Certainly not here in China, where to question a teacher on a matter of principle is not just unruly, but, for some, may be the end of an academic career.

Middlebury is a wonderfully different and in ways that I am only now beginning to appreciate. It is the kind of place where, as a first-year, a tenured professor of 25 years came to my dorm to make sure I was alright after I had missed class that day (and thankfully this student was actually in his dorm room sick!). It is the kind of place where I can for the first time belong to a rock band that brings together students of completely different backgrounds and aspirations, but who share a common love of creating music together late at night when the studying is over. And it is the kind of place where, again as first-years, a group of students can spontaneously create a new campus sport (Quidditch) that has since spread throughout the campus and even reached other schools, allowing for Midd to hose the first “World Cup” of Quidditch this past fall (my roommate, a cross-country runner, serves as “the Snitch”).

Midd is the kind of place that can and does change lives, as it already has my own. And, I expect, is the kind of place that continues to influence the lives of a lot of amazing alumni long after graduate.

That’s special.

As a history major, I was struck by the power of oral history—studying history through firsthand, oral accounts of the events—and of the importance of geography in shaping how a community deals with its history. In my opinion, the two are inextricably linked. If a story is told well, the retelling feels as vivid for listener as the experience was for the storyteller. This usually involves giving the listener a sense of place, such as in a city, or even in a specific building. It is important to know how the surroundings looked and felt to the person in that moment.

We heard firsthand about the atrocities committed in these cities. I could not help but think about the legacy of the places we were seeing. Regardless of the area’s appearance today, the collective memory came alive with one glance at an abandoned building in disrepair or at a renovation project that appeared to wipe away the past. Even for us, places became important reminders of the stories we heard. How did victims, perpetrators, and observers of twentieth century crimes view these sites, especially when they clearly brought the past back to life? From an academic standpoint, how much significance do we and should we assign to the idea of place in history?

Our group discussed these issues and experiences at meals, in our hotel rooms, on bus trips and walking tours, even while waiting for our luggage in any number of airports. We never came to any conclusions, nor was that a goal. Our conversations often ended with questions, not answers. Each one of us brought different backgrounds to the table, and our perceptions of what we saw were often radically different.

Upon returning to Middlebury, we concluded our month-long study with presentations on topics of our choosing. The idea of place was extremely important in my own description of our trip abroad. In other reflections, some of my classmates stressed the composure of those whom we had met. Collectively, we had developed a body of different stories of stories and places—quite a souvenir! Many of us often used the same anecdotes in discussion to raise different points about the central theme of collective history. How does a community interpret and deal with its own history? How should this history shape its future?

While the experience of being abroad was special in its own right, I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to travel with a group from Middlebury. My professors and peers challenged me personally and intellectually in ways I might not have experienced otherwise. I am hopeful that we will continue this dialogue well into the spring, encouraging each other to examine our attitudes and perceptions of the trip and of the nature of history in general. It will be interesting to see how our discussions take shape with time and space from our trip.