as of today, winter quarter 2003 is over. this marks the end of my 8th quarter of instruction as an undergraduate at stanford, and my 2nd as a graduate student. without a doubt, this was the hardest quarter of my stanford career, and possibly my life.
tonight i stood outside in the cold with dan, smoking tobacco mixed by an old man in st. augustine, florida [memories of home], in a pipe bought years ago in oxford, england [rite of passage]. i put my hood over my face and allowed the beautiful scent from the pipe to drift up and be caught in it, obscuring my vision with an aroma that did its best to take me far away from here. i looked back over the quarter, and saw a bleak landscape that i never realized was so heartless.
large distances can deceive, and as i gazed back upon the ash plain that was this quarter’s journey, it didn’t seem half as wide as it really was. landmarks looked compressed–small, and close together–further confounding the sense of how far i’ve come.
still, it’s not the distance that is most ineffable–where i have spent all this time getting to is equally unknowable. what did i do this quarter? i’m not so sure…it all seems so insignificant now. i took three classes; i was a TA; i didn’t exercise; i didn’t eat well; i did go to my classes for once in my life; i still procrastinated on papers, and to a point never before imagined; i put out a CD that i really love but that no one here seems too excited about [of course, expectations for stanford people are low to non-existent]; i took some small steps forward in my relationship with god, and made some incredibly dumb decisions in the same; i took my chances and decided to like a girl–decided to actually do something about it instead of internalizing every damn feeling–only to get shut down, for what are no doubt very good, if very unwanted, reasons; i decided that inconsistencies run deeper in me than i ever realized; i admitted to myself for the first time that i’m a habitual liar; i drank on more occasions than perhaps i would have liked; i learned that two is the perfect number to go along with the object known as the 15oz. guinness draught; i smoked on less occasions than i needed to; i didn’t play guitar enough; i suppose i learned some stuff, but mostly that bullshitting papers doesn’t glorify my creator; i became increasingly scared of my trajectory, but at the same time increasingly uninterested in where everyone else seems to be heading…
the question stands: where have i gotten in all this? what have i achieved? altitude, perhaps. a bit of a view. the dignity that can only be bought with pain. the right, at least, to throw my cloak around my shoulders, wrap it tight against myself, alone. the right to stop moving, to turn and feel the biting wind color my surveyance. the right to look at the rocky, ash-ridden plain and smile, seeing god’s grace strangely supervenient on this graceless terrain. the privilege, finally, to turn back around and start again with hope that it is the next bend which brings a new world.
