Dear Reader,
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”
I had just turned in my time sheet at the Admissions Office, and was on my way back to my dorm. My only class on Fridays is math at nine in the morning, so I was now free to wander around and take my time getting from place to place; it was the perfect time to slow down and take in my surroundings. Let me set the stage for you.
The Admissions Office, built from strangely pristine white wood (do they wash it often?), stands at the bottom of the sloping hill. Next to the gym and Kirby Theater, it almost looks like a humble 18th-century house that was dug up and misplaced into the country’s 2nd best (or very best, it’s up for debate) hub of intellectualism. How does Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” factor into this?
I had taken a right, out of the Admissions Office, and then met two paths. The one on my left would take me straight to my dorm’s back door; unfortunately, I would need to climb up an incredibly steep hill. But, that wasn’t all. My dorm has a truly idiotic design--I can’t enter through the back door. At that point, I was using my brain more than I had ever used it this week (joking). Should I scale that hill, walking until my shins hurt like I had just taken my Tuesday/Thursday route from the Science Center to Converse? Should I scale that hill, in the hopes that someone would be there to let me in? Or, should I take the road “more traveled by”? The path on my right had a gentler slope, but I would need to walk further. Maybe I’m not strong enough, yet. Mentally, or physically. I decided to take the road “more traveled by,” so apologies, Robert Frost. Hopefully, I will soon be stronger. I started walking up the path on my right.
The sun came out today; it shone brightly on the snow, so much so that it almost hurt my eyes. Still, I was glad. I hate dreary weather. As I was walking up the hill, I took my time. After all, I didn’t have any other classes. I chose to forgo my earphones, so my primary source of distraction was gone. Also, I had the whole weekend to study and complete my homework. So, the world wouldn’t end if I spent more time on the walk back to my dorm.
I tried kicking the little bunches of packed snow, but the snow was in its crunchy state. There’s a big difference between fluffy and crunchy snow. You kick fluffy snow, and send it flying into the air. You don’t risk kicking crunchy snow, lest (I definitely don’t use this word in real life) it injure an innocent bystander. Both have their purposes. Anyways, I decided to stop kicking the snow. Who knows when somebody would walk by?
There’s little “dips” in the path; water had collected there, and now the cold weather has frozen that water into ice. I slid around on those tiny ponds of ice for a moment, and while doing so, was brought back to a couple days ago, when I had slipped and fallen down on the steps of the palace (no, that’s from the musical “Into the Woods.” I don’t live in a palace. I live in a dorm that used to be an academic building, but accidentally burned down). I slipped and fell on the steps right outside my dorm. Fortunately, I am only five feet tall. Therefore, I didn’t have that far down to fall. Also, it was around 8:30 AM; it might as well be dawn to college students. The only people around were those who were sleepily and slowly but steadily making their way to Val. My fall escaped their attention. Anyways, what was I talking about again? I literally forgot. Oh, I was talking about those little ponds of ice, and my point was, isn’t it interesting how the lack of control can make any sense of appreciation or enjoyment vaporate? Like water on a hot day? (Wow, that metaphor came out of nowhere.)
The trees looked really barren today; maybe because the sun was highlighting everything in sight. It almost looked like how an animation looks like, when it’s still in the planning stages and all the lighting and rendering hasn’t exactly been perfected yet. All the leaves had fallen by now, so I could see all the tiny branches extending into even tinier branches, and so on. Actually, we just got to binary search trees in Data Structures. Maybe that’s why I was noticing trees more. My professor was really enthusiastic about it, too, saying how if trees only had one branch, then the lengths of all the tiny branches would make this new abomination of a tree grow “exponentially” upward. It didn’t sound right to me, but who am I to argue with a PhD? I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night. As I was looking at the trees and working hard not to misstep, I suddenly saw all those tiny branches. They looked so thin, like legs of spiders. I really detest spiders. They give me the creeps. Actually, once, I was asked what my superpower would be; in my head, I thought, “Well, obviously, make it so that no insects are allowed near a one-mile radius of me.” Out loud, I said, “I’d want to instantly heal anything.” I would go deeper into that story, but I think that I already wrote too much.
Anyways, I had made my way back to my dorm. I “beeped” myself in (what’s the technical term?). Nobody was in the common room. I didn’t realize how much I liked saying hi to people; I don’t know why I was a bit let down when I saw the empty common room. I turned the lock the right way on the first try, and was greeted by my roommate, who had just woken up. At that moment, I thought, I just had some sort of existential revelation or crisis, it felt like I had lived a life, however you want to say it, and my roommate’s day was just starting. That’s interesting, isn’t it?
P.S. Did you enjoy this weird post? Actually, I wrote this for a creative writing assignment for my English class (Literature of Everyday). I really like how we get to both analyze classic literature (right now, we're reading "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf and last class, we spent 80 minutes going over the first two pages) and produce some writing too. This was a forum post, and the minimum was 400 words (I accidentally over-shot by about 500 words). We are now at the start of the fourth week (Feb 18, 2020), and tests/midterms are heading our way, so I should get back to studying! See you next week!
Hope
