I swung the car door open and stepped into the salty early evening air. Across a brick-lined walkway, students laid strewn about the campus lawns like discarded cigarettes; carefree, content, and spent from yet another day. Looming in front of me was the campus building that would become home to the majority of my graduate studies, henceforth – “Something-something hall.” I can’t remember the name.
After deconstructing my Big Apple existence, taking it down piece by piece, Lucas and I moved to Norfolk, VA where he would begin medical school. Capital “M” Medical school. We settled in a lovely cranny of the town’s historic district, Ghent, and began our reconstruction. We started building our new life together in a creaky-floored third story apartment in a picturesque colonial home that beckoned us to her from the very beginning. It was a love at first sight kind of thing. We were wide-eyed and smitten; felled by the siren song of the home’s many charms; her grand winding staircase, her twelve-foot ceilings. Blind as bats to the possibility that we could call any other spot home.
Yes, this must be the place.
Lucas had driven me to my first-ever graduate class as an MPA student at Norfolk’s Old Dominion University, giving me an enthusiastic two thumbs up when I looked back at the car before making my way inside. The evening’s sea breezes carried top notes of rain and freshly cut campus lawn.
Norfolk is a tough place to peg. Situated on Virginia’s eastern coast, it is one of seven cities that make up what is known as the Hampton Roads region, and was a home to us during Lucas’ medical school years. The city boasts some of the most gasp-worthy, architecturally divine examples of historic Virginia housing. Utterly charm-filled, these nooks of the city give it a sort of glow from within that you have to go looking for to know it’s there. It’s not an obvious, in-your-face sort of charm, which I always appreciated. The city’s rough and somewhat fraying edges give way to a much richer, gilded beauty once you dig into it a ways.
The World War II battleship, Wisconsin, is docked in Norfolk Harbor and strikes a commanding pose from its anchored perch. One of the largest battleships ever built by the U.S. Navy, the Wisconsin keeps watch over Mermaid City as she sleeps. Naval station piers, numbering one through fourteen, are stacked up on Norfolk’s western edge, looking on a map like a fine-toothed comb, jutting razor-sharp out into the Elizabeth River. One part gritty. One part pretty. From the beginning, Norfolk struck me as a city of contradicting qualities, and I’d approached our move there with the most open mind I could.
As an undergraduate student and high school student, you go about your business understanding your place in the hierarchy of things, the social order rolled out before you. You know what comes next: freshmen turn into sophomores, then into juniors and then finally, the much awaited senior status arrives. You know your place as soon as you walk through the doors, and can easily wrap your head around all of your schooling as someone who is, at least a little bit, anchored in their sense of place. The foothold of a label, and a next label, can be a helpful thing.
Now I’d positioned myself at the starting line of yet another graduate program, looking around for that grounding sense of direction, the “what comes next.” Where to run to? I am never not craving a “Next Thing” to head toward, to grab on tight to. I was forged that way. But now here I was, a freshly minted grad student, searching for arrows. I’d jumped into a pool of students whose ages ranged from twenty-something well into the fifties. There was no next stepping stone, no predictable leapfrogging to the next thing – no tidy labels or guidance counselors to sit me down and tell me what I should do with my life. I looked around, and all I saw were open waters.
I’m not saying this was a bad thing, and I’m not saying that it was good, either. This was my life; the training wheels and safety nets were simply beginning to fall away. And it had my full attention.
***
I took my seat in the large first-floor lecture hall and removed my course syllabus for this Monday-Wednesday class, “Conflict Resolution.” I was instantly transported back to my whirlwind few days at Columbia. Here we go again, I thought, an unsettling pang of nerves sucker-punching me in the stomach.
“Let’s all turn to pages 266 – 270 in the textbook, and see if we can’t break down the author’s questions before proceeding with today’s chapter.”
Like battle-ready soldiers lined up according to height, I arranged my supplies on the desktop before me; a mechanical pencil, two Uniball Signo Micro 207’s, a couple of highlighters, a fresh notebook. At least I know how to fake it; to go through the motions as someone who knows what they’re doing. I could look the part brilliantly.
“Lauren, I mean, if nothing else comes from it, at the very least you’ll walk out of this grad program knowing how to resolve conflicts better, you know what I’m saying?” Lucas had teased before dropping me off. I smirked at the thought.
I listened as the professor’s bellowing voice bounced between the walls of the large classroom, catching the attention of most everyone. I, on the other hand, stayed distracted by my own anxious wallowing, standing sheepishly in the corner of the pity party I’d been throwing for myself ever since I left New York.
This could be Columbia right now, I thought, my eyes taking in the room around me. Had I made a mistake? I didn’t think my decision to leave had been a bad one, but now that I was seated in yet another classroom, surrounded by a fresh set of peers who, like the last bunch, seemed razor-focused, appearing to know exactly what they were doing there – I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t feel proud anymore, it had all lost so much of its luster. Like a freshly opened wound, my raw ego had been ripped apart and exposed.
Wasn’t I supposed to be sitting high above the streets of Manhattan, surrounded by whale savers and Ameri Corps vets, hurling myself toward a life of promise? I’d quit that dream though, turned my back on the potential of it. I’d run all the way away.
Now, if this part of the story makes you want to run away yourself, maybe with a barf bag in tow, due to the sheer cringeworthy-ness of my utter flippancy and near disregard for some opportunities that I’d just seemingly thrown out the window – then know that I’d happily join you. I’m not proud of it. But all I can do, I suppose, is reflect on it, own it, and maybe try to do better. I’ve tried to do better ever since. That’s scout’s-honor true.
But in the moment, sitting in this new classroom at this new school, it became clear to me that the most pressing conflict in need of my attention was the one brewing in my own head. Like a holiday snow globe, just waiting for the white noise to settle, there I sat. As the lecture trotted along, I took my notes, doodled in margins, and nodded my head in faux interest, pretending to care.
