A very premature crush list - Maya Goldberg-Safir

Sometimes I get fed up with this place. There may be better reasons to dislike Middlebury, but so often I come back to the same restless discomfort: I am always surrounded here. I am always watching. I am always being watched.

Maybe you can relate — you know those days when the perky girl on your hall is up in arms with her snow kayak, or whatever it is, and she’s giddily torn about how exactly to finger paint her new sneakers? Perhaps you’ve been unable to even begin an essay in the library due to the frantic anxiety of just having seen too many people you’ve made-out with?  If you’ve ever fallen asleep crying, or gotten too drunk, or watched three episodes of reality TV instead of reading the genuinely interesting article you were meant to and walked ashamed into the dining hall the next morning to the greeting of one hundred pairs of eyes that seem to say hey, good morning, we can tell that you’re feeling like shit — I get it.

But even with the releasing hallelujah of spring break on its way, a funny thing happened to me. I decided to write a love letter to Middlebury.

Let’s begin with the men’s ice hockey game I went to a few weeks ago. I don’t know any men’s hockey players. I prescribe to some strange social code stating that we are not meant to be friends. At the hockey game however, when some obnoxious Castleton St. player slammed a Middlebury player against the glass, I became immediately furious. I wanted to yell like a heavily-bosomed mother in her son’s old jersey, don’t you dare mess with my boy ever again.

Then I went to the Middlebrow improv show.  I have a few friends in the group, but the members I felt most fascinated by were students I only kind of know, a little bit, not really. That’s the point — I’d only seen some of them from afar, only admired one’s thick red hair and another with his cute, accented girlfriend. Every member of the group felt familiar, tangible and adorable.

After the improv show, I anxiously watched the men’s basketball game in McCullough. I wanted them to win so badly — perhaps mostly because Jamal has such a great laugh and Ryan Sharry still says “hi” to me and I still secretly wish that Jake Wolfin would come to Hillel and the other day I saw Andrew Locke put a plate down in Proctor with a fork stuck straight out of his mashed potatoes. After the team lost by a heart-wrenching two points, all I wanted to do was hug the shit out of each of them.

I don’t mean to focus my glorified love on only the most admired groups of campus. I’ve experienced more subtle moments too.  Like seeing a girl singing to her headphones while toasting a bagel, or the quiet girl from my English class breaking it down at the bar or discovering that two seemingly disconnected people I know are friends, or better yet, dating. Even the knowledge you’ll probably understand any joke I make about the Bunker or Proctor vegetable stock feels reassuring.

I spend a lot of my time at Middlebury comparing myself to others. I dare you to admit that you do too. We are all lazy, crazy, hung-over, failing, ugly and fat on our most miserable days here. But we are also thrown together in these tight spaces in ways that sometimes makes me feel almost breathlessly appreciative of others. So to everyone, before you go on a liberating road trip or return home or take some crazy island adventure, I want to thank you — for surrounding me, for watching me, and for allowing me to watch you.