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My grandma, my baa, is the strongest, most beautiful woman I know. She married young, didn’t finish school and immigrated from India with her six children. We jokingly called her a family man. She made time for her 14 grandchildren, spent her days calling each of us before and after school and would ask for updates on our well-being and our friends. She was, and continues to be, my dearest friend.
Whenever I told people I was studying abroad, I felt like I was lying. I felt as if I hadn’t done anything to deserve such a rare once-in-a-lifetime experience — the kind most people don’t get.
Growing up, I used to feel anxious before the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. The thought of spending hours at my synagogue on an empty stomach made me feel uneasy, and I always found the holiday to be a lengthy challenge that I just had to push through without question.
We’ve all done it: woken up some 15 (or 30) minutes too late, scrunched our eyes in exasperation at the steps of our morning routines that must now be skipped in order to make it to class on time. In high school, we were all guilty of it — exhaustion compounded after a particularly heavy week of assignments — and those extra minutes in bed felt like a worthy trade-off for having to eat your breakfast while walking out the door. But all of this changes when you get to college and are presented with exceptional freedom to control your own morning routine.
There is a tiny little square of my computer screen, tinted light blue and gray, where I can see the silhouettes of people walking into my quiet level of the library. I don’t look at it often — usually, I’m too preoccupied with the blankness of my Google documents — but when I do, I can see so much. They’re just silhouettes — not people, really, not until they come into view — but without the face, you notice so much more. The way they walk, the urgency with which they go places. Sometimes they look around. Maybe they’re curious about the people inside, maybe they’re scanning for a free seat, a nicely secluded desk.
As I am sitting on a park bench facing the runway at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the ground begins to shake. About two miles away, at the other end of the runway, one of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ many Boeing 787-9 airplanes begins to push 1.2 tons of air past its engines every second as it lifts over five hundred thousand pounds of fuel, cargo and passengers off the ground. In roughly thirteen hours, it will touch the earth once again on a similar runway outside of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As the plane thunders down the runway, the roar of the fan blades overpowers the sound of my camera’s shutter, as I gather as many photos as I can in the few short seconds it spends on the runway.
On his 42nd birthday, author Ross Gay decided to write an essay each day about a small joy in his life — a collection of essays that later became The Book of Delights. I first read an essay from the collection, “A High Five from a Stranger,” a few months ago. In it, Gay describes the beauty of positive physical interactions with strangers. The essay struck a chord with me, as I always initiate physical contact — whether it be a high five, a hug or a kiss on the cheek.
It’s my last fall semester at Hopkins, which is a bit surreal. It’s exciting, yet daunting because once this school year is over, I have to be a real adult.
As I start my senior year at Hopkins, I’m already thinking about the end of it. It feels like I reached this year in the blink of an eye, yet at the same time, high school feels a million years away.
I spent the beginning of my sophomore year in a bit of a tizzy.
It’s my third year as a First-Year Mentor, and this year, my mentees — unintentionally, I’m sure — made me feel ancient. Over lunch at Nolan’s on 33rd during Orientation Week, I gave my mentees my perspective on the social scene at Hopkins, and one made a comment to the others about how I have years of experience here. As in, “We should listen to what she has to say.”
I have always had a hard time saying goodbye to things. Moving from country to country throughout my life — from Korea to Japan, Japan to Scotland, Scotland to Hong Kong and Hong Kong back to Korea — I was constantly forced to leave my friends and memories behind. With no time left to process the change fully, I have had to cling to the memories of the past. Even as I mouthed goodbye, I never fully meant it, always reminiscing about my life in the previous country.
Moving to a new country is a popular ambition — one that comes up often, whether during a holiday when a friend insists that they “could totally live here” or in the midst of the dreaded “post-college” talk with your parents as you attempt to plan out the rest of your life.
And, as quickly as ever, a new year at Hopkins has begun. It feels as if summer never happened — the Hopkins Student Center construction looks the same as it did in April, the sun still shines relentlessly (maybe too relentlessly) and the campus bustles with new and familiar faces.
Last summer, while working with patients with Parkinson’s disease, I noticed one elderly patient who was incredibly nervous about her upcoming mobility test. Right before beginning her exam, she stared ahead at the large digital clock in the room. When she saw that the time was 12:14 p.m., she immediately relaxed her shoulders and let out a deep sigh. Tears gently welled up in her eyes as she became filled with emotion, radiating comfort and relief.
A cruel irony that is only understood after your second year: The best time to be at college is when you’re not there. Such is the tyranny of the academic calendar. The nicer it is outside, the less time you spend there. Constant classes when it’s cold and horrible, midterms in the peak of spring, everything due when you’re dying for the Beach, and so on. Only when you dare to spend all summer on campus do you break the cycle. Here, as you enter academic purgatory — otherwise known as a master’s degree – you gain the posture to look beyond your next step and notice the redness of the bricks.
Adjusting to college seems, to me, like becoming an adult.
One of my goals for my semester abroad was to take a solo trip. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, but I knew that the experience would be crucial to learning more about myself. After sitting on the idea for some time, I decided to go to Kraków, Poland for a few reasons. First, I have Polish heritage on my mother’s side. I grew up eating some Polish foods prepared by my grandmother: pierogi, babka and kołaczki, to name a few examples, and I was very intrigued by the possibility of having Polish dishes in Poland. Though I was most familiar with the country’s culture in terms of food, I was also interested in the nation’s history and nature, making the trip very appealing. I ultimately decided between Warsaw and Kraków and booked a four-night stay in Kraków due to the wide array of attractions available as well as walkability.
Growing up on the outskirts of Washington D.C., one of my favorite spots as a child was a bridge near my house that overlooked the trains rushing to and from our nation’s capital. Watching them with my grandparents was exciting for a five-year-old whose television habits involved Thomas the Tank Engine, Cars and other animated shows starring transportation. And so, my interests as a five-year-old included playing with a train set that I had at home, consciously observing bus and rail services, and reading books about our nation’s infrastructure and locomotives.
When I was younger, I was always known as someone with a “quiet voice.” I tended to be shy and let others speak for me, preferring to hang in the background and let my achievements shine through. However, this was not an attribute that I particularly liked about myself. I strove to break through those bounds and find other avenues to make my voice heard as I entered high school. I joined debate, the school newspaper and took on leadership roles to force myself out of my comfort zone and get used to public speaking.