20 - monday

van wickle gates

manning chapel

we are ever true to Brown,

for we love our college dear,

and wherever we may go (where are we going?)

we are ready with a beer!

and the people always say (what do they say?)

that you can't out-drink Brown men (and women!)

with a scotch and rye and a whiskey dry,

and a B-O-U-R-B-O-N!

ok, so those aren't the official words to the fight song, but I like that version of it way better than the official one.  I also think it's funny that in an effort to appease their co-ed's, the "and women!" response was eventually added.  oh, political correctness.

"75% done, 100% checked out" was my facebook status just one short year ago, when I was finishing up finals and celebrating with friends before graduation.  I had an unusually free afternoon today, so I stopped on campus on my way home from work to sit and reflect a bit about where the past year has taken me.  many of my friends are coming back to campus in a few weeks for the alumni weekend/commencement celebrations, and it will be interesting to see how everyone has changed and where we've gone, what we've done.  

I, for one, have not gone far; I still live just a few streets over from campus, and will be returning next month as a grad student.  I remember feeling very insecure and slightly panicked at this time last year.  I applied to nearly a dozen PhD programs, with straight A's in my undergrad anthropology courses, sterling recommendations from my thesis advisors and the department chair, and a firm proposal for a course of study.  it seemed a shoe-in.  a done deal.  I figured I would have multiple offers and the luxury of choosing among them.  instead, I received across-the-board rejections.  I had mentally resigned myself to 6-9 years in the security of university study, but suddenly found myself without a Plan B - no job, no direction.  

the past twelve months have certainly been a rollercoaster.  my brother is a trained and seasoned chef in manhattan, with a background both in cooking and in culinary management.  if someone had held a gun to my head a year ago and asked who of the family would be in a managerial role in a fine dining establishment, he would have been the obvious choice.  but alas.  I came to my current job after an endless summer job search that obviously got me nowhere, and led me to decide, at the last minute and in the middle of a thunderstorm, to pull my car over in the rain and leave it, engine running, while I ducked inside a construction debris-laden restaurant and ask for a job.  the rest is history.  

despite the feelings of despair I had last May, and the bizarre turns my life has taken since then, I am grateful that my PhD plan fell flat.  my anthropology thesis for which I earned my honors was about Providence schoolchildren, immigration, violence, neighborhood dynamics, and gangs.  while my anthropology background made me excellent at conducting fieldwork and analysis, it also left me with a crisis of participation.  I wanted to do something, not just to take tidy notes and sit back and analyze.  I longed to find a way to get involved in the issues that were most interesting to me.  the program I'm starting next month will exercise the best of my anthropology background and apply it to the sorts of problem solving and public service that I intend to make a career out of.  the uncertainty I feel now (in not knowing exactly what that career will ultimately look like) is ironically comforting.

last but not least, going back to Brown for grad school means my family, friends, and loved ones get to suffer/endure/witness the splendid glory of yet another day-long, march up and down and here and there and sit and stand extravaganza that is Brown commencement.  lucky ducks!