Harvard, Un-Hitched
Looking back on graduation, & half my life
Half my life, I was hitched to Harvard. Three years where it was my singular dream; three years living that dream in Cambridge the first time; five years as a dropout pursuing a wider dream; and then, finally, one perfect senior year.
I got in at 16; I graduated at 26, one year ago.
After I graduated, the adventure kept pulling me along, rushing me back & forth across the country. So, I never fully processed what senior year meant to me, or shared pictures from my fantastic senior spring. But yesterday, the Harvard email I used for a decade finally deactivated. So, I started thinking about what that whole decade meant to me.
I was too gung-ho to realize it at the time, but I started Harvard before I’d ever really had a chance to grow up. Hitchhiking, building my own home out of a schoolbus, and five years exploring all 50 states as a dropout gave me the time, space, & experience I needed to find my own path to maturity. When I finally came back for my senior year, I was the old person in class for the first time in my life. But more importantly, I’d become myself. A reasonably healthy adult. The same mind on fire, but this time with more focus & fortitude, so I could ride the fire without burning out. My senior year grades were the best I ever had.
While we all stood in Harvard Yard, just before Commencement, I suddenly felt a flood of overwhelming, beautiful feelings. It felt like something that had long been blocked up, forever unfinished, was finally releasing all at once. I realized that I was exactly where I belonged; simultaneously, I realized I was finally ready to leave for good. On the right terms— my own. I cried for the first time in years. Happy tears. Grateful and free.
I wanted to feel everything, so I left the crowd and sat with a tree. (That sentence is a pretty good metaphor for my time at Harvard.) A photographer for the Harvard Gazette captured this candid moment. Apparently, I was holding a flower. I often forget details like that. But that’s okay. You can’t hold anything beautiful too tightly.
