You’ll hear many students say the first time they stepped onto the Texas A&M campus, they felt at home, like they belonged. When I stepped onto campus the summer before my freshman year for the Gateway program, it felt like a child trying on a pair of her mother’s heels — foreign and not-quite fitting.
I didn’t seem to mesh well with the people who knew they were Aggies before they could even articulate such a thing, because for some reason — and I’m still learning this about myself — it takes me a while to ease into an environment.
Like thousands of other college students, when fall arrived I blew in dandelion fashion, in different directions.
The first two years of school were spent wandering in the hot, sticky sun at sorority recruitment week, tipping my hat to the Christian sorority crowd, volunteering at Breakaway, working as a barista and occasionally stumbling around Northgate like I enjoyed it.
My experiences aren’t entirely unique, but some people are better at recognizing when they’ve lingered for too long in one place or finding that they’ve outgrown experiences that have helped shape them. I’m not one of those — not right now, at least.
Only when it’s too late do I plant my roots firmly into the ground and think, “Hey, please let me stay awhile. I just got here.”
The first time I walked into The Battalion office, there was a feeling of contentment. Although my eyes were wide and I felt nauseous. The same happened with the first interview and then the process of writing the first story. In the months following as an editor, there were opportunities to help ease that same transition for others and help them find meaning in what they were doing for 10-15 hours a week.
Both writing journalistically and reading about this community and the people in it broadened my perspective, sometimes in ways that pushed me to grow up, especially when it came to stories that dealt with covering the aftereffects of a student death.
I found a community and a job that was satisfying and meaningful — it just took a while to get there.
But it’s a paradox, because even two years later at this newspaper, including my summers, one of which I spent as editor-in-chief, it feels as though I have just started growing roots.
For us late bloomers, or those graduating Aggies who were maybe tepid before they became passionate, the end of four years is particularly blindsiding. There’s also an ounce of frustration, because the inclination to ask for more time meets with the reality of reality — transitions are inevitable.
As a part of the millennial cohort, we’re supposed to be malleable and able to adapt quickly to new skills, careers, environments. At times, I have felt that maybe there are exceptions, but it’s easy to default and be your own worst enemy when change presents itself.
Although I’m not yet graduating and am instead spending my last semester in Austin at an internship, I’m leaving College Station and The Battalion and it’s sticky-sweet and unsettling. The sentiment rings, I’m sure, for any other student out there who is about to witness, in some respects, a gust of wind that will blow in new experiences, and maybe one of those experiences we’ll be able to really root ourselves into, if just for a little while until we move onto the next.
Allison Rubenak is a telecommunication media studies senior and life and
arts editor for The Battalion.