This past weekend I took a trip to Syracuse University, a school I called home for two years before ultimately settling in at Arcadia. While “Under the Influence” has a much more traditionally collegiate meaning there , I was struck with a feeling of nostalgia and general sappiness upon leaving. It’s that feeling that I want to share with you. It’s not that I miss attending that school, by all means it was never the school for me. However, reconnecting with friends for the first time since leaving almost a year ago left me to reckon with my own influences.
I began thinking about all of the people who have had an influence on my life and how I became the person I am today. From preschool through high school I knew a lot of familiar faces. The circumstances of my school life allowed me to have the same friends for nearly my entire life before entering college, a few of whom I’m happy to say are still influencing me daily. Around college is where the most emotionally confusing relationships occurred.
In my senior year of high school I attended a pre-college program at Northeastern University, a school I was set on attending for nearly a year. I had done my research, gotten my grades up, and been accepted into their program. There I had to set my nerves aside at the age of 17 to socialize outside of the lifelong circle I had become accustomed to in a college environment. The connections I made were profound yet short lived. This would be a theme I would revisit upon leaving Syracuse.
Attending Arcadia University, I felt a strong hesitancy toward making new friends. I felt I had nothing left to prove. I’d done it successfully at least once or twice already. But each relationship brings new influence, and new opportunities for connection, and that’s where the best human symbiosis occurs.
The most frequently recurring lesson I learned about my own influences was that regardless of the relationship you might have with a person, each one is fleeting. Your parents, your siblings, your pets, your lifelong friends, all of the relationships we have tend to have deep effects on who we will ultimately become, each one is temporary. By the time you graduate college your time with your family is already mostly spent. From living with your parents to seeing them on weekends to seeing them on holidays, our time with the people who’ve molded us from the beginning is over before we ever know it.
This feeling of melancholy covered me on my drive back from Syracuse. Adapting my personality from new friends at Arcadia to old ones at Syracuse is draining, but I’m glad I can still make the switch. Nearing the end of my college tenure, I realize that I’ve already been influenced by so many titanic people that have at moments rekindled my belief in fate. The influences in my life that remain only get more meaningful as they progress.
As Leonard Cohen said about the entirety of life: We’re only passing through, sometimes happy, sometimes blue, glad that I ran into you.
Relationships and influences may be temporary, but maybe that’s part of their allure.
Sincerely,
Your friend who’s seen it all
