on Stanford

I found this notecard a couple of days ago, with tiny, yet passionate words about a trip to Stanford I took post-graduation, during my first year of teaching:

"I'm not sure what I expected coming back to Stanford - the culture that dominated by life for the last four years. Would I feel some sort of a deep longing for the days of dorm life, sleeping in, Lag dining and eternal sunshine? (It rained today.)

But instead, I felt oddly removed from it all. As if to signal my return to awkward youthfulness, my hair immediately proceeded to frizz and the pimples that my adulthood had suppressed the last 6 months, fought their way to the surface. But I didn't feel self-conscious, not even as I walked down the hallway only wrapped in my towel. I didn't care if people liked me or not, an unease that now I think stung at me for much of the duration of my college experience.

Instead, a different type of discomfort plagued me. Surrounded by this privilege and a group of people with such an absolute unawareness of its existence, I was bewildered. Indeed, money can buy you a better life, and it had never been more apparent to me than it was standing in the midst of Stanford campus life.

As I sought to rekindle old friendships, I found myself growing frustrated with the pettiness of some and the flakiness of others. But instead of feeling personally insulted like I would have in the past, I simply felt a pang, and then it was over. I don't have enough time or energy to deal with things that are not real, true and live. I deal with enough deadness in my job."