I am a pre-med biochemistry major, and as a result of that choice, I loaded up on difficult classes my freshman year. I fell in love with chemistry, made it through my first finals weeks, and even managed to do my laundry every once in awhile. Needless to say, as much as I love Kenyon, after the spring semester, I needed a break from that intensity. So, that summer, I went home, or more specifically, back to the Village of East Canton.
Somehow even smaller than Gambier, East Canton is an absolutely amazing place with absolutely nothing to do. That means that my friends and I are very creative about entertaining ourselves. One of my best friends from high school, Nick, and I have always succeeded in coming up with wild, ridiculous ways to amuse ourselves. Some of our most notable endeavors included creating an announcement team, a team chant, and a kickball tournament during school hours, wrestling pigs at a pig auction, and convincing our administration to let us hide alarm clocks all over the school as a senior prank. Looking back at it, we got to do a lot of random things that were mostly based on an unfounded belief that we were “good kids”. So, Nick was also home for the summer after our freshman year and was also going a little stir crazy. Unlike me, who lives in the actual village, Nick lives on a 12-acre farm in the adjacent township and, as a result, was always given many farm chores to complete (see pig auction). One of his jobs that summer was to clear all the dead trees from the land and, needless to say, he was not looking forward to it. Anyone who has ever split firewood understands that it is a hot, thankless job. I posed the idea of starting a somewhat unofficial business called “Woodchucks Wood” and then selling the firewood over Facebook. The idea took off. Both my family and Nick’s, as well as many of our friends, have houses have wood-burning stoves that keep us all toasty in the winter, so clientele wasn’t an issue. The hard part was the physical labor. We only came up with the idea in mid-July so we were about to hit the hottest part of the summer, and both of us were also training for our college cross country teams, so we were often beat-up from long distance runs. That being said, we fed off each other’s enthusiasm and came up with a system that kept me far away from the chainsaw (which was really for the best). Here we are grinning ear to ear before our first delivery in Nick’s old Ford truck.That summer I learned to be resilient in a different context than Kenyon classes had taught me. Chopping wood in the heat of the day is different than the challenge of studying for an exam on thermodynamics, but the parallels between the perseverance and resilience needed to complete both tasks did not go unmissed. Those traits are what I maintain as the most important to make it through a challenging major, race, or anything that life might throw my way. That summer I learned a lot about my own personal strength, and I grew to appreciate the luxury that is sitting inside in the air conditioning and learning. Having this perspective has made me appreciative of what being at Kenyon means, and it has marked my continued maturity as a student here.
Image Credit: Feature, Megan Gothard