It came down to a choice: double-major or study abroad...but it was much more like...
The Question
I was starting my second semester of sophomore year at UC Berkeley and felt directionless. I loved English literature so I thought about majoring in it, I was feeling hot and cold with my hobbies, and I just lacked a long-term focus. I loved rhetoric too so I thought I could double-major. Or why not study abroad?
This last question lingered for weeks.
But I finally answered it. There was just an ounce more in me of "let's do the unexpected" than the more introverted academic in me. It reminded me of a feeling I experienced in the summer before third grade when I went to camp for the first time. On the third day, we were encouraged to get up at dawn, go to the camp’s freezing pond, and jump off the dock. The “polar bear swim” it was called. After rational ways of justifying why I shouldn’t, I ignored them all and jumped in. I shivered, I panicked, I calmed down, I swam, I laughed, all in two seconds.
But I wasn't always the one to instigate the jump. Fast forward two years later to one warm Sunday in the middle of August. My mom lets me know that I’m starting something new on the weekends. I get out of the car, blinded by the sun, and walk into an old wing of a renovated college building. Kids my age and way older leaned against the walls, tying tight, black shoes to their feet and carrying colored folders with sheet music. The covers said "Oliver!" It was my first day of musical theater. I knew no one and had no idea what was going on. But it was my choice to stay in the end, and did it for many more shows thereafter.
Now here I was on a Friday in the downpour rain on Berkeley’s campus, sophomore year. I finally stopped procrastinating and went to the study abroad office to ask about England programs. I first thought only about doing a summer deal, quick and easy, but the lady said it just...wasn't as fun. So I finally decided on a semester immersion. She smiled at me and let me know about it, but before long, she said, “Well, you know, the application is due in less than two weeks.”
Teacher recommendations, financial forms, personal forms, scholarship forms. I barely managed but I got them all in. Now all I had to do was wait.
And wait I did. I waited long enough that life happened. I declared the English major, interviewed and settled into an editor position for an academic journal, had a girlfriend, and started living with the best of people in the fall. And I considered tacking on a rhetoric major too. Things were kind of set. I was happy. I had direction.
Then I got the letter. I was accepted to the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, for the spring of 2012. I would have to drop everything at Berkeley and start over somewhere else.
Well, I did. I did it for the same reason that I once jumped off the dock and knew that I would freeze in the next second. I stayed with the decision like I stayed with the first rehearsal of "Oliver!" It wasn’t because I hadn’t thought of all the reasons not to do them. It was because there was part of me that wanted to answer an off-the-wall question “What if I…?” and know what it actually felt like to be on the other side of that question. The chaos that you can't explain, only experience.
Once I stepped off the plane and scrambled my way onto the Tube in London, with a green bag that made me look—for all intents and purposes—like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I experienced a blissful sensation. I realized that for the first time, I was in a place without personal history anywhere nearby. My dialect was my own, my culture just my habits. All sense of control was abolished. I was on reset. But there was so much possibility.
I feel it every time I travel now. The dialect may be similar, the terrain relateable, but traveling is accepting change, however temporary, and living it. This was my reason to travel, travel long enough to be inspired to always want to travel––and the people you meet and share the adventures with, those fill up the reasons to go back, when you can. To buy a plane ticket, not a new car (middle-aged mindset in the making). To budget most of the year, then use the extra to fly (what I do now). Traveling lessens the gap between you and the stories you hear about and lets you begin anew. You experience a “Day 1” in London, “Day 1” in New York almost exactly two years later, and a “Day 1” you’re holding onto for next time. And all the micro-“Day 1”’s in-between.
This last question lingered for weeks.
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| Jan 2012. St Pancras Station, my first sight of London. Blurry and confused. |
But I wasn't always the one to instigate the jump. Fast forward two years later to one warm Sunday in the middle of August. My mom lets me know that I’m starting something new on the weekends. I get out of the car, blinded by the sun, and walk into an old wing of a renovated college building. Kids my age and way older leaned against the walls, tying tight, black shoes to their feet and carrying colored folders with sheet music. The covers said "Oliver!" It was my first day of musical theater. I knew no one and had no idea what was going on. But it was my choice to stay in the end, and did it for many more shows thereafter.
The Reason
Now here I was on a Friday in the downpour rain on Berkeley’s campus, sophomore year. I finally stopped procrastinating and went to the study abroad office to ask about England programs. I first thought only about doing a summer deal, quick and easy, but the lady said it just...wasn't as fun. So I finally decided on a semester immersion. She smiled at me and let me know about it, but before long, she said, “Well, you know, the application is due in less than two weeks.”
Teacher recommendations, financial forms, personal forms, scholarship forms. I barely managed but I got them all in. Now all I had to do was wait.
And wait I did. I waited long enough that life happened. I declared the English major, interviewed and settled into an editor position for an academic journal, had a girlfriend, and started living with the best of people in the fall. And I considered tacking on a rhetoric major too. Things were kind of set. I was happy. I had direction.
Then I got the letter. I was accepted to the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, for the spring of 2012. I would have to drop everything at Berkeley and start over somewhere else.
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| Jan 2014. SFO Airport to NY. (I got better at taking photos.) |
"Day 1"
Once I stepped off the plane and scrambled my way onto the Tube in London, with a green bag that made me look—for all intents and purposes—like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I experienced a blissful sensation. I realized that for the first time, I was in a place without personal history anywhere nearby. My dialect was my own, my culture just my habits. All sense of control was abolished. I was on reset. But there was so much possibility.
I feel it every time I travel now. The dialect may be similar, the terrain relateable, but traveling is accepting change, however temporary, and living it. This was my reason to travel, travel long enough to be inspired to always want to travel––and the people you meet and share the adventures with, those fill up the reasons to go back, when you can. To buy a plane ticket, not a new car (middle-aged mindset in the making). To budget most of the year, then use the extra to fly (what I do now). Traveling lessens the gap between you and the stories you hear about and lets you begin anew. You experience a “Day 1” in London, “Day 1” in New York almost exactly two years later, and a “Day 1” you’re holding onto for next time. And all the micro-“Day 1”’s in-between.
But the first Day 1 is always remembered. It’s the first time you completely, wholly, unequivocally, irrevocably, impulsively, finally let yourself go.
And so began Day 1, 8 January 2012. St. Pancras Hostel, London. 18:58 UTC. Swollen feet and sleep deprivation do not lessen the feeling of triumph: I am in London...
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| The River Thames, London; May 2012; Sure, it's pretty, but a photograph is a photograph. It is its context that makes it much more important. |
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| University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich; my last days there. I can't deny that I missed home at this point and wanted to return, but the instant that I did, I felt confused. I was homesick—but the other way around. |
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| UEA's Lake/Broad. Sunset, June 2012. I ran around this lake enough times to do it in the dark and in the snow. It never got old. To this day, I could still tell you where the wooden bridge started, where the puddles after rain collected... |
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| Jan 11, 2014; NY; Morning Run Along the Brooklyn Bridge. My first long "solo" trip since England...but is it ever "solo" when you stay with endearing family and friends, and meet up with old friends? |
