As the semester comes to an end, always remember “the nails are gone, but the holes still remain.”
When I was younger, I would spend my summers at a sleepaway camp in upstate New York called Timberlake Camp. I would be there for seven weeks of my summer with the same people and the same routine. By the end of the summer, you can imagine how redundant everything felt. Personally, I would be so sick of it, but looking back, feeling that way was always my biggest mistake.
I would live with bunkmates while I was there, a group of a bunch of other girls that were my age. The closer the summer comes to an end the more temperamental you become. Even the most understanding people start to act snappy. I, too, would find myself on the brink of being so sick of it I would act out on my friends. I said this was my biggest mistake because I would wake up in my bed at home for the first time in seven weeks and it’d finally hit me, the summer was over. My last week of camp, I didn’t appreciate having some of my best friends just a few feet away from me before they were hundreds of miles away. What could have been a week filled with fond memories was just a week filled with fighting and regrets. I have realized that at college I was in danger of repeating the same cycle.
If you think about it, “bunkmates” are just like college “roommates.” I am exposed to them basically 24/7 and alone time is a luxury none of us can afford. Just like camp, college is a never-ending sleepover, but instead of having the scheduled sports activities, college comes with classes, homework, and exams. I have spent the past few months cultivating friendships that I can only hope last a lifetime. The last thing I want is for the last week before holiday break to end on a bad note like summer camp does. I fear that with all the stress of finals I am going to wake up in my bed at home again and have the same regrets as I do at the end of every summer.
In hopes of finding a solution to these seemingly unavoidable dark clouds of stress and homesickness, I turn to a story I was told at camp one summer. Every Saturday at dinner, the camp director would tell a fable story during an event called STARFISH, and, at the end, explain what the lesson was that came from the story. There was one story he’d tell at the end of the summer that personally stuck out to me. Fortunately, I have a shortened version of the story to share. This story is called “The Nails Are Gone, but The Holes Still Remain:”
“Tonight’s story is about an old man, a retired carpenter, who is the neighbor of a single mom and her young son. The mom, who works late, asks the old man to do her the favor of watching her son after he comes home from school. Every day the boy looks forward to going to the old man’s garage with him to learn about carpentry and to help him build things. One day, while the old man is away on an errand, the young boy, bored, hammers a bunch of nails into the newly built wall of the man’s house. Upon returning, the old man is furious with what the boy did. Feeling bad, the boy gets the hammer and begins pulling out all the nails he had driven into the wall. When he is all done, the boy goes to get the old man and brings him to show what he had done. The old man, seeing the wall, says to the boy: “the nails are gone, but the holes remain.”
The moral of the story is that when we do damage by doing or saying hurtful things to people we care about, an apology is nice, but it doesn’t always completely undo the harm: “the holes remain.” What I take away from this story is that even though you might be under a lot of stress or pressure because of school or are just ready to be home it is not an excuse to be cold to your friends. It is easy to say that you are just in a bad mood, but that does not mean your words do not have an impact. As the semester comes to an end and your stress over finals increases and all you can think about is getting away from your roommates, take a step back and make sure you are treating your friends and roommates well. You do not want to go on winter break on bad terms or have negative tension with anyone. You will be doing yourself a favor by ending the semester on a good note with all the relationships you have cultivated the past few months.