Crash course

Wake up from a mostly sleepless night to realize I haven’t magically been transported to my room back home. Tiptoe out of room to cry on the phone to my parents or best friend a thousand miles away. Realize time, rush to get dressed, run to cafeteria for breakfast. Locate most isolated table, eat food while practicing how to be invisible. Find symptoms of acute anxiety disorder each time someone tries to make eye/verbal contact. Crawl to class. Drag myself through the day, barely talk unless it was absolutely necessary, run to my room the moment classes end. Alternate time between phone/skype, homework, books, old TV series, and exhausted sleep. Avoid human contact with anyone not virtual and a thousand miles away.

This was not how I had pictured my big adventure would be. Attending UWC had been my dream since the very first time I visited the college website, and told my father with all the awe a fifteen year old could have, “I have found Totto chan’s Tomo….this is where I belong.”  And MUWCI turned out to be everything I had imagined- lively, diverse, passionate, with more opportunities than anyone could grab; it was I who had turned into something I didn’t recognize. When I excitedly stepped out of my home of fifteen years in spite of the frowns, concerns, and questions that tried to stop me, I hadn’t imagined that I would miss it too much to enjoy any of the things about UWC life I had longed for so much. Outside of my comfort zone for the first time,  I had too much to get used to and learn, that getting through each day  was a task…..building a new life in the community I had dreamt of became a thought from the past.  I made through each day with a cross off on my calendar, and a promise from my parents that I could re-evaluate my decision to attend MUWCI  when I’d be home for winter break after the first 3 months.

I don't know when it was that i realized how pathetic I had turned, but like the advice to a lone- heart, I told myself I had to “throw myself out there.” I stopped shrinking away to my corner when my roommates asked me for tea, stopped running away from conversations longer than a minute, awkwardly showed up at social events and made an effort to socialize. And a week before winter break, talking of holiday plans on the roof over tea and popcorn with my roommate, I had a surprising realization - as much as I was looking forward to being home, I was sad to leave. I loved waking up to the Norwegian song that was my roommate’s alarm, spending Friday afternoons making Japanese rice cakes with a friend who missed them, crying over Korean dramas with my Biology lab partner, finding my conversations mixed with Telgu, Bangla, Hebrew, Dutch, Punjabi words. I loved that there was always an amazing story someone had to share, a fascinating idea being discussed, an incredible conversation waiting for me.

With this happy realization, I went home with a light suitcase….for I knew I was coming back. And the next 1 and a half years I spent there, was a crazy, beautiful adventure. Sure, I still had a fair share of nights I spent crying into the pillow, events I skipped to Skype with my parents, and days when I wished I could drop everything and fly home; but every time someone asks me about my two years in UWC, I mean it when I say that I had the time of my life, that it truly changed me, that it was my crash course in maturity.            

Now at the brink of another transplantation, my roots tremble in scared anticipation. Uncertainty chokes Optimism, and the Great Perhaps of the easier alternative pokes Determination. But from the bits of wisdom on yellow post its I gained from the walls of MUWCI, comes to mind one…. “If I am to regret something, I would regret doing it rather than not doing it”. Pounding heart and fluttery intestines, Determination in place….any step worth taking comes with fear.