Flashes of Panic

After several days thrashing around in orientations, I’m closer to figuring out what my day-to-day life will look like for the next few years, but oddly enough, not much closer to bonding with the institution. The name has pretty much submerged into an adjective used only to distinguish how-we-do-it-here from how-they-do-it-elsewhere; you don’t think of it much. I am a graduate student (or gradual student, if you’ve read too much John Irving,) but I don’t consider myself a Tufts Student, at least not in my mind.

I don’t think it’s like this for the undergraduates. They aren’t bound as tightly to one department, and they are expected to identify with the university as a whole. They play sports, they work on the newspaper, they look down on the other institutions which may or may not have turned them down, and they have reunions and get hit up for cash for the endowment.

There was plenty of identifying done at my college, and I was both surprised by it, and took it for granted. We had a strong rivalry with a (relatively) nearby college, and since a large part of rivalries is about identifying yourself, we dug right in. That was no surprise. Then again, both my high school and my older brother’s college had blue and white colors, so it did come as a bit of a shock to see the house break out in purple before I left for my college. I’d never noticed all the blue. I haven’t gone to brown and blue yet, and I doubt I will; aside from a t-shirt my parents gave me, all I have with the university’s name is a hat A. gave me for my birthday. It started blue, but is fading, improbably, towards brown.

When I started this whole circus, nearly five years ago, it amused me to pick up a hat from the night school I was then attending, and wear it. I only took Calculus there, but it still amused me; it was almost like pretending to be someone else. I was less willing to identify with my night school in Massachusetts, but now I’m tagging myself again.

It’s very subtle, though; when I wandered through the gym yesterday, the emeritus something who picked me up and toured me around the place latched on to my t-shirt from my undergraduate college before he noticed the hat (if, indeed, he ever did mention it.) “Well, you’re in the wrong place, aren’t you?”

“They’ve given me a degree,” I shot back. “You all haven’t yet.”

Now Playing: Never Believe You Now from Strangest Places by Abra Moore