School-Sick

The end of fall term is upon us at Knox College. Classes are over and finals are coming to a close. A muggy combination of relief and stress fills the air. The hours pass like odd day dreams, as certain members of my reality disappear back to this place called “home.” As I walk down my dorm hallway, doors that I am so accustomed to seeing open are closed in finality. There is an unusual quiet. Not a silence, for even without people, it is impossible for anything in Galesburg to be silent; with our murders of crows cawing into the night and train whistles blasting every few minutes. But, there is, without a doubt, an unsettling absence of human sound.

I find myself simultaneously wishing that I did not have to go back to Skokie, but also wanting to be with my old friends and family again. I know I am not, by any means, the only or the first person to feel this way, but it does feel as though I have discovered something. A limbo of sorts that can only be experienced when one has multiple places to call home; the choice of at which to spend your time is a hard one. And it’s scary, going back to a world you know will be different than it was when you left it.

College is the ultimate time wizard—for lack of more poetic terminology. You go there knowing that things will change in your hometown; that time will pass. You accept it and plunge into college living only to find that at school, there are not a normal twenty-four hours in a day. No, some days, there are far too many hours, and the minute hand idles on your clock. Other days, the clock hands seem to be running a race with themselves, and yet, you are the one who is losing. You find yourself going to bed either ridiculously early or ridiculously late. And meals, well, it seems as though every two hours you must eat, because it’s been a whole two hours since the last one, and now you are famished. Basically, at school, time makes no sense, and the prospect of going back to a more structured time table that doesn’t include the people you’ve been living with for the last ten weeks is bizarre.

So, bye Knox College. I’ll miss you. See you in six weeks, so you can mess with my sense of reality all over again.