A few weeks after I’d decided to spend my fall semester studying abroad, I realized that would mean I’d be voting absentee in my first general election. At that point, I didn’t know just how consequential this election would become.
Yesterday morning was my first day of class as a Swedish Program student at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). Just as I did on my first day at Kenyon, I allowed myself ample time to get to class. But instead of a leisurely morning stroll across a quiet college campus, my morning commute involved half an hour on the tunnelbana (metro), wedged shoulder-to-shoulder with Swedes heading into the city for work.
The morning I moved to Kenyon as a first-year student, I remember feeling butterflies in my stomach as I woke up in the hotel room my parents and I were sharing.
Before I started college, I wondered briefly if coming to Kenyon and majoring in something other than education meant that I was going to stop thinking about teaching and become fixated on a career more closely connected with the major(s) I would end up choosing. I’ve found quite the opposite to be true.
When I was 7, my mom’s best friend from college was diagnosed with lung cancer.