Henry Abbott

In August 2023, I boarded a flight to Paris, France and set off to spend my junior year abroad. As I jetted into the cloudy sky and nervously anticipated the year to come, I thought about what I hoped to relish from city life. Above all else, the answer was anonymity.

After two years on Bowdoin’s crammed campus, I had become suffocated by the Bowdoin bubble and a deep social anxiety had begun to settle in. I constantly worried about the next “Bowdoin hello” or awkward interaction, often sporting my L.L. Bean hoodie over my forehead in hopes of avoiding any encounters with the outside world.

Though I had chosen to attend Bowdoin because of its size, I became disillusioned with my little corner of the world. I didn’t want a corner; I wanted the whole world, damnit! As the snow piled up on the quad during my sophomore winter, I decided the only way to win back the pep in my step would be to study abroad for my junior year. In need of some glitz and glamour, I decided on Paris and lost myself in excitement for this new chapter.

I imagined the new me, enveloped in a dazzling bubble of mysteriousness and anonymity that I so sorely lacked in Brunswick. I holed up in the Quinby living room and scrolled through Pinterest boards of Paris, concluding that city life would be the only antidote to the loneliness and worry I experienced at Bowdoin. This was it. Not wine, not the sparkling Eiffel Tower, not the chance to travel—no, the city of love would offer me an escape from the campus I had come to dread.

When I arrived in Paris, I walked around the city as a new person. My anonymous self was fearless, unquestionably cool and ordered her morning coffee in perfect French. In this vast new city, far away from the cramped hallways of Smith and HL, my sense of self grew and my anxiety healed. Yet—you guessed it—there was a catch. Being surrounded by strangers was an awesome change of pace, but I couldn’t help but feel something was missing. With my friends scattered across the city, a new type of isolation began to settle in.

Could I—oh my gosh, was this even possible—be missing Bowdoin’s campus? Longing for the awkward interactions by the Thorne soda machine? Wanting to see my professors walk their dogs across the quad? Imagining mustering up the confidence to waive hello to class friends? As I wandered the beautiful abyss of the city, I realized that I was missing the campus rituals that I had previously come to loathe. Winning back my anonymity came at a cost after all.

It turned out that all the special things about Bowdoin’s tiny campus were invisible to me before Paris took them away. I had let myself grow so disillusioned with Bowdoin that I was blind to the community it had so graciously placed in my lap three years ago. To be acknowledged by my peers across the quad or behind the Smith Cafe counter was actually incredible; it just took getting into a metro car full of strangers everyday for me to see it.

As I finished out my year in Paris, I soaked in every glance at the Eiffel Tower, every flaky croissant, every conversation in broken French with my Uber drivers. But at the same time, I grew more and more eager to rejoin the community I had rejected. By the time I found myself driving up I-95 to move in for my senior year, I was more than ready to cash in my anonymity once again and dive headfirst into the Bowdoin bubble.

Like many seniors, I am preparing to re-enter city life after graduation. So I embrace every Bowdoin hello—even the awkward ones—the packed quad during passing time and random encounters on the lighthouse lawn. Because above all else, I know that taking this community for granted would be a mistake I never want to repeat again.

Maile Winterbottom is a member of the Class of 2025.