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.

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!

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.  

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.

As for the writing in this blog, I am eager to hear any thoughts/comments/questions you may have. I’ve never “blogged” before. My hope is that you find the entries interesting and even thought-provoking. There is no concrete structure for entries, so I anticipate that they will vary. Sometimes I think these posts sound quite personal, and at times I feel like a reporter writing an article about what is going on at Midd in general.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog, and I hope to hear from you soon!

Thanks!

- Alex