Ethan Lam

The summer before my semester abroad was my first time away from the College for longer than a month since I matriculated. After spending my first year, then first summer and then sophomore year on campus, the College began to leave a sour taste in my mouth. Coming off of a year of emotional burnout, I was desperate for some time away. I knew something needed to change—something within my environment, something within myself or maybe a mix of both.

At the time, I did not think that change was going to be a summer in Storrs, Conn. I dreaded the days approaching my summer research program at the University of Connecticut. The season I loved most and the break I much needed brought trepidation rather than relief. Perhaps the fear came from starting over on a new campus, but I think what I feared most was that the debilitating anxiety I had felt the month before would only get worse when I was placed in an environment where I was truly alone for the first time in so long.

In the absence of hustle and bustle, I found the clarity that I needed in the routine of a nine-to-six lab job and evenings of nothingness in which I would visit my newfound friends, the UConn Dairy Barn cows. I found myself wandering each night towards what I termed “Cow Hill” without thinking, and it eventually became second nature to take a two-mile walk after dinner to fill my time alone with sunsets and cows. I told all of my friends that asked me how my summer was going that “my farm-girl era” was doing wonders for me.

And it wasn’t an exaggeration. I shocked myself by finding comfort and joy in a place that frankly had very little to offer besides farms and highways to greater places. After a year of mental penitentiary, I had finally freed myself of the excessive worry and depression I had fallen into at the College. As I stood on top of the hill alone each night, I felt a new sense of purpose and fulfillment that I had lost over the previous year. Seeing a campus that felt so overbearing and expansive on foot as a mere fraction of the horizon gave me control over my surroundings in a new way. Each sunset reflected another day where I didn’t take my life for granted anymore.

Coming off of this peaceful summer, I was emotionally prepared to undertake a semester traveling across the world. Instead of conquering the Dairy Barn hill each night, each day came with new adventures and curiosities previously unimaginable to me. Instead of watching sunsets over Storrs, I watched them over the lakes and mountains of Udaipur, India, from the top of Lion’s Head mountain in Cape Town, South Africa and from the river over San Antonio de Areco,Argentina. Instead of taking daily walks alone, I walked back and forth across the tiny rooftop of my apartment building in Delhi after dinner with my host brothers on “walks for digestion,” as they would call them.

I went to a karaoke bar on Monday nights when I still had essays to write and readings to complete upon arriving home. I signed up to paraglide off a mountain and cage dive with great white sharks over the two days before a major midterm presentation. I booked trips across countries less than 100 hours before I left without hesitation. I was confidently bargaining with street vendors and warding off pushy rickshaw drivers on the daily—when at the College, I would apologize for bumping into an empty chair.

For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable in my own skin and content with the person I had become. I didn’t demand more from myself than what I could handle, and lifting that weight off my back made it so much easier to stand tall.

In casual conversation, a friend from the program described me as fearless and carefree, and I laughed. I would never describe myself as either of those things, nor would anyone who knew me before going abroad. So what changed? Life away from the College taught me to take advantage of little moments that spark joy and bring spontaneity to my life and to cherish the connections that can be made along the way.

As the weeks before my return to the College dwindled away, I questioned if I would ever be able to encapsulate what I had developed abroad again. I feared that returning to Bowdoin would bring back a person I no longer wanted to be.

But something’s different this time, and I think it’s that I’ve found balance. So maybe I don’t have time to take daily sunset walks, but I take breaks to call my mother every few days and my grandparents weekly. I can spend weekend evenings alone watching a romcom while doing laundry and still feel content. I can let myself go to sleep on a Friday night without setting an alarm on Saturday morning and still know that everything will get done when it needs to. I can decide to take a weekend trip to Providence, R.I. on a whim. My life at the College can have balance; I just need to let it, and moving forward, I will.

Kaya Patel is a member of the Class of 2026.