I live a pretty loud life literally and metaphorically. Not only do I have a voice that can reach and carry unprecedented levels, but also I generally just enjoy busyness. I pile on extracurricular activities not only because I truly love being involved with what I do, but also because I get a thrill from being “on the go.” In another way, I love meeting and making friends with new people. Hardly ever will I be able to sit next to a random person in lecture and not start a conversation with them before the end of class. I like loudness.
I’d say this is pretty much how high school went for me as well. Generally, my Mondays would consist of getting shushed repeatedly by my AP Calculus teacher (even after he started assigning seats), getting my entire journalism class off topic over Taylor Swift’s newest music video, going straight to my student council meeting after school, then tennis practice and sometimes dinner with friends afterwards. This is how I always liked it to be.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized silence is sometimes more powerful than noise. After a somewhat rough second semester my first year, I returned home for summer break unhappy with my grades, not necessarily proud of the person I had become over those months and overall disillusioned with the “busy” life I had maintained at the University. To say the least, I was more than ready to return to the back roads and mountains of Blacksburg (sans college students). I felt like I needed a breather, and I really missed my mom.
On one of my first nights back, I hopped in my car and decided to do what my friends and I did throughout the entirety of our high school years for fun: drive around in circles around my small town. I rolled down the windows and drove through my favorite back road, Happy Hollow, into the valley and even through Virginia Tech’s campus a little bit. With just my radio on, I spent some time reflecting during this drive and then returned home to write about it. Finally, I was able to take a deep breath and really think.
I discovered a lot about myself, like possibilities as to why I was struggling in school and how to recover next semester, or maybe that I wasn’t mature enough to handle a lot of things college life threw my way, or possibly that I didn’t have my life as put together as I had initially thought. Within the first week of being back at home, I realized something crucial — I needed to slow down and retreat from all the noise.
If you were to ask me what my favorite things in the world are, home would be pretty high on that list. I always tell people it’s because of the views, the old friends, my dog Lexi and Cabo Fish Taco (one of my favorite downtown restaurants), but I also just love the quietness. I love home because it is my ultimate recluse from the crazy schedule I maintain at the University.
Throughout my summer at home, I was finally able to appreciate some of the things I had taken for granted in high school. You don’t fully learn to enjoy 12 hours on a plane to China with your family until you’ve spent a year at college missing them. I learned how to better prioritize myself for the upcoming semester and began to try to sort out what I really wanted to do in the future — apart from what my friends and classmates were doing. Most importantly, I finally learned to accept and be okay with the fact that life will not always go the way you want it to, especially not in college.
Upon returning to the University for my second year, I found that there are many ways to still find this peaceful quiet around an otherwise busy and nonstop environment. Some of us could find recluse in early morning walks to class, when no one is on Grounds yet and the air is still crisp. Others could find it on a jog through the Corner. I like to spend my alone time in my apartment writing. Maybe yours is blasting Kanye in your headphones while walking through a crowded Newcomb.
Regardless of where you find it, I think reflection and time alone is necessary. Though I’m sure many of you, like me, thrive off of the competitive and busy environment that is the University, it’s important to keep your life from getting too chaotic. Between heavy workloads, extracurricular activities, social life and even social media, the life of a University student leaves little room for self-reflection. Even more, sometimes it’s simply easier to let yourself get caught up in the chaos rather than take off time to address tougher personal problems. I’ve found, however, that I’ve grown more as a person in the silent moments than the loud ones.
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