It has been an interesting and lively three years with you. I’d like to say you’ve seen me through it all. While I haven’t had the craziest life-changing undergraduate career here, you have beared witness to my biggest growths and reflections – after all, I am definitely not the 18-year-old girl from 3 years ago. I am a lot more mature, more focused, less preoccupied with my self-image and perhaps a little less timid.
Your trees have seen my hair journey from black to orange and back to black as they too bloomed and gently shed throughout the seasons. The gravel path to and from Ravenhill have listened to my tour spiel over a hundred times and yet the familiar crunch welcomes me again and again. As the birds tell me good morning when I pull into downs and those same chirps remind me to get home safely in the evening, I feel a sense of warmth. All of these small details on this large campus are what I am going to miss.
I am going to miss the midday naps I took on the top floor of the library, with the sun warming the back of my neck as I doze off during break period. I am going to miss laying in the hammocks listening to the white noise of students shuffling to class, speaking in a mumble of voices I cannot discern from one another. I’ll miss all of the break period festivities with clubs moving tables, setting up food and music and enticing students to have fun much like car salesmen.
And more than ever, I think I’ll miss seeing myself with you. Every time I think of a place on campus, I am always in that vision; I’m on my phone scrolling through reels in one of the Ronson lounges, or in Hayward H113 presenting my slideshow about cortices and deficits, or pulling out my phone to take a picture of your pretty pink and white trees and blooming tulips.
And despite being a commuter, I would still like to call you a sanctuary of sorts – not a home, no – a safe place for me to just be by myself and I am eternally grateful to you for offering this space for me.
So, thank you to Thomas Jefferson University’s East Falls campus for the past couple of years. I liked the quiet and seclusion as much as the chaos and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything else.