Dear Lexie,
I hope you are doing well and are happy with who you have grown to become. I just finished my first week of college and I am feeling uncertain but excited for my future and the journey that college will take me through. Right now, we are still in the pandemic. Tomorrow, quarantine will be over and I will be allowed to go to the library, go into Middletown and hopefully interact with more people than I am currently. The only person I am interacting with now, other than virtually, is my roommate Lila. Since I am really unable to go out and do things like normal, I am struggling to crossover into my college self. I am at college yes, but not really.
When you go to college, there are certain markers that validate your college experience, and since I’ve been here only few have been checked off. These include, going to parties, having a roommate, living on campus, late nights with your friends, going to classes, studying in the library, going to the dining hall and just having a fun time without your parental supervision. Since I arrived, I have had late nights, but they were filled with schoolwork instead of fun, I have been pretty much stuck in my room (aside from some walks across campus). I also have classes but they are online, and I live on campus which is nice. Instead of going to the dining hall, I stand in lines outside of Summerfields to get all of my meals. Now, I know this sounds like complaining but I am just listing all of these so that you remember what life was like for Wesleyan students during the pandemic. My main activites of the day are standing in line for food, getting tested, or waiting in line at WesStation for a package. Since I am unable to fully experience the college life I feel almost stuck in limbo with just one foot out the door. I am here but not really. Its like the college life is here, but at the same time, out of my reach. It’s a difficult feeling to come to terms with.
Since this is a period of transformation for me, my stages to becoming a true adult, I should be experiencing all the markers that signify this shift. Graduation, prom, summer after high school, orientation and the beginning of my college career were supposed to be these markers. But the pandemic either completely took them away or changed them in a way that invalidated my transformation. I am struggling to move past the old and into the new. I am here but it kind of just feels like I am at camp. Soon, I hope, my brain recognizes the shift that is occuring. I hope that soon, if people behave, we are able to regain some semblance of normalcy without posing a health risk. Lila and I are so excited to just go out into Middletown tomorrow and get food out. It sounds strange since that isn’t much but we haven’t left campus in about a week and I’m starting to get a little antsy just sitting in my dorm.
I started my classes last week and I am really enjoying them so far! I am taking Intro to Archaeology, Psychology, Biolog, Biology Lab and Dance as Cultural knowledge. I’m actually writing this letter to you for my first writing assignment in my Dance class. This class is really engaging me and I am super interested in this topic. We are learning about javenese culture and court dance while also engaging with the material by learning it! I am not a big dancer but I am really looking forward to learning Javanese dances. It is so beautiful and unlike any other style of dance that I have seen before. Then again, I am not very familiar with East Asian styles of dance. We have been reading some articles about the dance and we just started the book for this class. We have also been watching videos of the performance and taking notes on what we observe stylistically. We began learning the basics of the dance movements such as the hand gestures and posture last week in class. I cannot wait until we can go to the studio and learn in person because that would really be much easier. We also just got our Sampurs, they are the scarves that we use for this specific dance style. They are beautiful and colorful. I really am finding that I have a strong desire to learn more about this dance and the culture from which it originates.
I love East Asian culture and this class allows me to learn more about these cultures. I am specifically interested in the origin of the cultures and the contexts that surround them. For example, in Javanese culture, they mask their expressions while dancing and almost create a doll-like expression. They do this because of their cultural desire to create a calm and pleasant exterior. They disvalue desires and wants and they believe that one can find out your desires through your expression. So in order to gain privacy of your desires, one must mask them. It is these little cultural flairs among societies that really interests me. Why some cultures believe one thing while another believes in something entirely different. I wasn to look more into why cultures differ from one other and how these beliefs and values originate.
Besides classes, I am just looking forward to all the pieces that indicate my college life will soon start to fall together. I have met some cool people but, with quarantine and all, have not had many chances to make meaningful friendships. I hope that changes soon. One of the first things I was looking forward to doing in college was making a friend group that was practically family but I have not been able to do that. I think that with time I will find them, because this pandemic is slowing everything down. I know someday I will have those important people in my life and I know you, my future self, actually knows their names and faces. I just have to be patient.
Love you and please stop to appreciate how much has changed since this was written.
Love,
Lexie of the past
