we'll always have colgate
Before I say anything, I want to preface this article with an acknowledgement that, in the grand scheme of things, I could have it a heck of a lot worse. I am lucky that myself and my immediate friends and family are healthy and I am lucky to have a safe and happy home to come back to right now. I do not mean for anything that follows to attempt to overshadow or minimize the larger issues facing the world right now.
@emily.pearson shared the neighboring writing on Instagram a few days ago. I think she says it really well. It sucks right now. But it could suck more and I know that.
I don’t want to get caught up in competition over pain or loss. We’ve all lost something in this. We’re all scared. I’m just trying to process and work through my feelings and my goodbye to a place and a community I thought I had more time with.
I don’t know how to say goodbye to Colgate. I don’t know how to say goodbye to Colgate in an Instagram or a video or a blog. Not in one last drive up the hill or by listening (and crying) to a playlist of the soundtrack of our past four years. I’m sad and frustrated, angry and heartbroken, and grateful to have someplace that I love so much. Nothing seems right. Nothing seems enough. I don’t know how to say goodbye to Colgate, don’t know how to honor or thank the school that became home.
I wrote my senior thesis in Educational Studies on the importance of community and connection in higher education, particularly at Colgate. In my opening paragraph I cited Marina Keegan’s The Opposite of Loneliness.
We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place. It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team … Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers – partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group texts. This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.
We found the opposite of loneliness at Colgate. We were part of clubs and houses and study groups and cohorts. We built families, robust with tradition and bursting with love. We celebrated birthdays and decorated for the holidays. We attended weekly meetings and worked campus jobs. We held speak outs and ran 3Ks and advocated for change. We had formals and date parties and dressed up for every theme imaginable but some of the best nights were the ones when we stayed in and played board games. We wove ourselves into the fabric of Hamilton. We were more than just students and we were here for more than just a formal education. We loved each other. We knew joy together. We were in this, all of this, together. We found and built something so much greater than just us.
In my final in-person undergrad class my professor asked all the seniors in the room to share a nugget of advice with the underclassmen in the room. I shared the following –
Colgate is not always the easiest place to be. Being in the middle of nowhere can at times feel isolating and lonely and it is an exhausting experience to exist on a campus that experiences overt discrimination on a such a frequent basis. We are a campus familiar with trauma. My advice, or maybe more than anything this is a plea, is to continue the hard work of making Colgate a better place. As much as I have seen and known pain on Colgate’s campus, I have also seen and known love and community to shown up in ways beyond my imagination. I hope that Colgate continues to be a place where we may show up for each other, hold one another accountable, and question tradition and the status-quo. I have seen change happen here. I know it is possible. I believe Colgate is a better place today than it was four years ago and I hope that Colgate continues grows to be a better place than how I left it.
I don’t know the exact moment when Colgate changed my life but somewhere somehow it happened. It happened on the quad and in the Persson basement. In East Hall and 113 Broad and Little Blue and Parker. It happened at the Jug and the Taproom. It happened over orientation and in those last 4 days we spent together. Colgate, I would not be me without you. This is not the way I wanted to leave, but I am lucky and grateful to be so heartbroken right now, it means something special happened these past four years on top of the hill.
As I packed up my room this past week and said my goodbyes I heard a lot of “it’s not goodbye, it’s see you later” and “this isn’t the end for us”. This is true, I will be back on Colgate’s campus again, hopefully sooner than later and I will continue to hold the people who became my family at Colgate close to me forever. But I share Marina Keegan’s fear.
More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.
I’m scared it won’t ever be the same again. It won’t ever be as convenient or as simple as it is or as it was a week ago and for the past four years. And I don’t really know that I have yet come up with a way to comfort myself or you through that fear. But I guess just saying it out loud helps a bit.
And so I don’t know how end this or how to say goodbye to Colgate. But maybe we never say goodbye to Colgate. Maybe we just say goodbye to college. We will never get this time in our life back and it was cut too short. And that hurts. But this campus will always be home. These people will always be home. And I know that as long as we all have each other, we’ll always have Colgate.
