Training Wheels for 22-Year Olds

Talk of the Quad: Bearded in Cairo

I arrived in Cairo on Wednesday, June 19, eleven days before the onset of nationwide protests that were to depose President Mohammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. I moved into an apartment on 15 Bostan Street, a couple minutes walk from Tahrir Square. In true foreigner fashion, I found myself paying double-price for the taxi, dragging my suitcases into the lobby. Most apartment buildings in Cairo have a doorman—a bawab—and I spent our first conversation trying to explain that I was claustrophobic and was going to walk up eight flights of stairs to my apartment. He smiled and grabbed my suitcases as he stepped into the elevator. I started climbing.
The summer before, I had studied at Middlebury’s Arabic program with a friend who then recommended a language institute in Cairo. I took his advice, and this summer, I signed up for six weeks of an intensive language course and gave myself a week at the end to travel around the country.
In Egypt, like in every other Arabic-speaking country, people speak a local dialect of Arabic known as aamiyya. Aamiyya and fusha are like two languages that, while obviously related, are still noticeably different. I, like every other foreign language student, learned the latter—it is taught in schools, spoken in official capacities and used for all written Arabic. However, I soon learned that no one spoke it outside of a presidential address—ever. As I explored the streets near my apartment, I tried to pick up conversations with whoever was willing. Midway through one, the man I was speaking to paused, saying, “I can’t believe I’m speaking fusha right now”—obviously saying most of it in aamiyya. I was a Shakespearean character walking around twenty-first century London; all I was missing was the medieval outfit.

Talk of the Quad: Living humbly for a cause

Even after two years spent working towards a Bowdoin English major and thousands of hours curled in a ball in Massachusetts Hall reading Victorian novelists, African-American poets, French deconstructionist theorists and—my personal favorite—Indian writers writing in English, the passage that most resonates with me is still one I read in high school.
It doesn’t come from a novel that carries much intellectual cachet. It’s not old and dense like Joseph Conrad or Leo Tolstoy; it’s not postmodern and trendy like George Saunders or David Foster Wallace; it speaks more to naiveté than sophistication.
That’s part of what makes it so important, not just for me, I think, but for our generation. The novel is J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951. It’s the quintessential book for angsty, disaffected teens, and although I was more happy-go-lucky and innocent than brooding and rebellious in tenth grade, I—like millions of high school students before me—was taken with its narrator, one Holden Caulfield.

Talk of the Quad

Training Wheels for 22-Year Olds

September 13, 2013

Lobster rolls, lazy afternoons at Popham Beach, free concerts at L.L. Bean, Cote’s ice cream on the green, and multi-day stretches of perfect weather.
Summer in Brunswick has gained legendary status at the College. Yet somehow in my four years at Bowdoin I missed the memo that summer is, in fact, the only worthwhile season to exist in Maine.
So as my self-imposed deadlines rolled right on by, unfulfilled (by Winter Break I’ll have an awesome job…by Spring Break I’ll have applied to a job…by graduation I’ll have 40 dollars…) and I faced one gigantic post-grad question mark, I decided to throw in the career path towel and eat as much ice cream as possible instead.

One month later, I commenced a summer of scooping Dark Chocolate Noir sorbetto at Gelato Fiasco and nannying part-time.

I wish I could state in writing that my summer was the idyllic mélange of Maine-y goodness that I always imagined it would be. I pictured myself making daily, sundress-clad trips to the farmers’ market, rising at daybreak for long, healthful jogs in the Brunsick Commons, and whipping up craisin-studded, massaged kale salads for dinner.

In reality, I spent my summer stocking up on ramen and 2-for-1 wine bottles at Hannaford, watching Netflix all day and scrubbing crusted gelato off of urinals all night, eating string cheese and Triscuits for dinner in bed at 2 a.m., and beating fruit flies to death with a dishtowel in my kitchen. It was a far cry from the picturesque scene of free-spirited maturity that I had painted for myself.

What I learned is that finishing your homework once and for all (or for now) doesn’t make you a good grown-up. I was still living alone and cooking for myself for the first time, without the support of Facilities, ResLife or Dining Services.

Nonetheless, figuring these things out in Brunswick provides the same sense of comfort that attaching training wheels to a bicycle affords a new rider. The friendly faces, old haunts and relaxed pace of the Brunswick day-to-day made these new adventures significantly less traumatic.
Despite the comforts that residing in Brunswick provides for this transition, keeping it local after graduation has its drawbacks.

For one thing, there’s something about sticking around indefinitely that feels like a failure in comparison to all your peers taking off to Big Bad Cities across the continent (or rather, Boston).
I’m not just talking about the townie jokes that inevitably come your way. The stigma goes beyond that. I found myself constantly excusing my presence to close friends and unfamiliar customers alike, with lines like, “I just graduated in May,” and “I’m only here until I start my super awesome new job,” and “I’m moving to New York City really soon.” I am moving—joining the seemingly endless pool of fresh-faced NYC interns this month—but I still dreaded running into professors and peers, knowing that I would be compelled to justify why I wasn’t yet pursuing a career as a good math major should.

Ultimately, my obsession with validating my part-time jobs subsided as new anxieties cropped up with September’s impending approach.

Throughout most of the sunny summer months, it feels like business as usual living in Brunswick as a post-grad. Your mailbox is still your mailbox, the sweaty self-conscious faces in the windows of the gym are familiar faces, and it doesn’t feel like trespassing when you miss your street’s trash pick-up and bring your recyclables to the Brunswick Apartments dumpster instead.

Then, sometime in late August, Little Dog Café puts out its “Welcome Back, Bowdoin students!” sign, on-campus parking lots fill up with cars jam-packed with cardboard boxes, plastic drawer sets and a fresh pair of Bean boots, and all your friends start posting irritatingly cheerful photos from the lobster bake.

It’s around this time that you realize that there’s just not really a place for you at Bowdoin anymore. This is an undeniably depressing realization to have.

If you’re like me, you may find yourself susceptible to tearing up at sentimental J.C. Penney commercials during this time. Still, despite how hard it is to feel like an intruder in a space that was so recently home, this sensation was just the push I needed to take off the training wheels and get up on that two-wheeler.

But hey, keeping the training wheels on for a few weeks never hurt anybody, did it?

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