Dear Davidson,
You really played hard to get. I spent months compiling my transcript, personal statement, peer recommendation, teacher recommendations, counselor recommendation, a list of every book I had read in the past year (I have never felt more inadequate than I did after listing the books I read when I was seventeen), facts about myself that I didn’t even know until you asked me for them—I sealed every hope and dream I had into a manila envelope and prayed that it wouldn’t get lost in the mail. I applied early decision; I let you know that I chose you above every other school. I waited for weeks, wondering who the nameless, faceless people were who were locked in a room somewhere deciding my fate. And then you chose me.
Fast forward eight months or so, and I moved into my new home. I had my monogrammed bedding (shut up, I’m from North Carolina) and my new desk lamp…and my TV and my bulletin board and my fridge and my printer and my full-length mirror and literally all of my clothes…and I was so ready and not ready at all. The night before the first day of classes I signed the Honor Code and danced to some really terrible 90s hits in the first Cannon lounge and got the hiccups (probably unrelated to the 90s hits) and so it began. My freshman year is a blur of figuring out the room numbers in Chambers, which I’m still convinced make absolutely no sense, and flickerball games and Davidson 101 and being woken up at an incredibly ungodly hour on self-selection morning and realizing that high school did not prepare me for Davidson at all. But going home the summer after freshman year, I was not the same person I was when I moved in.
Davidson, you have given me more than I could ever have imagined. Some of the things you’ve given me I don’t know that I necessarily wanted—crippling anxiety; the understanding that no, actually, my best is not always good enough to get that A; the very bottom mailbox (literally I have to lie on the floor to check my mail); several scrapes and bruises from tripping over sniper bricks strategically hiding in walkways; inchworms in my hair, in my bag, on my clothes, even one in my coffee once (still not sure how that happened); the realization that literally every direction on campus is uphill. But so many of the things you’ve given me I wouldn’t trade for the world—mindless conversations on dorm room floors with the best friends I’ve ever had; late night quesadillas (RIP Outpost); professors who remind me every time I talk to them why I came to Davidson; the opportunity to record an album with my a cappella group, to help launch and write for our campus magazine, to find causes that I believe in and work with my peers to support them; Christmas in Davidson; Frolics; a town hall with a Supreme Court Justice.
I’m not sure when it happened, but some time during the past four years I grew up. Somewhere in the midst of too much caffeine and too little sleep, nights that I don’t remember (sorry, Mom) and days that I’ll never forget, obsessing over word counts and correct Chicago/MLA/APA citation, I realized that none of this and all of this defines me. My Davidson experience is an inextricable part of who I am, but it is not all that I am. I am more than my GPA, more than the nights that I lost a piece of my soul in the 24-hour room, more than the number of emails I sent to my advisor panicking about my thesis. When I leave this campus, I am confident that I will, at least for a time, remember how it felt to sit in the library staring at a blank Word document and trying not to cry because I waited until the last minute to start an assignment. But I will also remember how it felt to share a Vermonster with twelve other Delilahs (we did it for the Vine), and to check out at the Union Café and have Andrea compliment me on my outfit and ask how my day’s going, and to submit the final draft of my thesis and feel like I could do anything, and to walk across campus and see the sun hit Chambers at that perfect angle that seems to make it glow. When I leave this campus, I know that I will leave a part of myself here, but I will also take a part of Davidson with me. After I walk across that stage and receive my diploma and officially become an alumna of Davidson College, I will be sad that this chapter of my life is ending. But I know that Davidson has prepared me for whatever might come next, and I know that this community is one that I can always count on, and one that I will always be proud to call mine.
So thank you, Davidson. Thank you for the stress and the tears and the laughter and the successes and the failures and the joy and the love that I have experienced over the past four years. You’re right, it’s always a great day to be a Wildcat.
With love,
Caroline Brooks
Class of 2015