notes from the desk Searching for the Middlebury balance

Author: Grace Duggan

I arrived on campus this past fall knowing that I'd be flying to Córdoba, Spain right after J-term. Fresh off of the non-stop party - and, more importantly, the fantastic learning environment - that was Spanish School, I was pumped to peace-out from Middlebury for the spring semester. Like a lot of Midd-kids, I wanted to go abroad for a couple of reasons. I wanted to improve my language skills, get out of the United States, live on my own - living in the (Middlebury bubble) doesn't count - and enjoy a semester away from the insanity of the typical Middlebury workload.

At least, that was the plan. Let's return to the Spanish School experience. Fellow Midd-kids, I discovered a mythical land this summer, one in which I had it all - I could do all of the work that came with my full course load, share a radio show with a graduate student, spend two hours at art workshops every Tuesday and Thursday, attend most of the film screenings, go out every weekend and get enough sleep - siestas are the greatest invention known to man - such that I never felt like a zombie college student. I was also required to eat in Proctor for every meal but breakfast, which was great because we had that terrace that I could sit on for hours at a time while making fun of the obscenely tight jeans that everyone seemed to be wearing over in the French School.

Spanish School spoiled me because I came back for the fall and a decidedly more realistic Middlebury schedule kicked in. If workloads were people, my initial fall schedule could be likened to a mob hit man that takes you out behind the construction site to rough you up for failing to get your bribe money in on time. This was a problem, because Spanish School had convinced me that you could get everything you wanted out of life and get your work done without turning into a sleep-deprived library-dweller who hasn't seen natural light in two days. You'd think that this would have made me want to go to Spain even more, but I wound up doing something I would never have expected. I backed out of going abroad.

Why couldn't I accept that the summer school experience was exactly that - just a summer thing? After seven glorious weeks at Middlebury, I realized that escaping the workload was not a good way to approach a semester in Spain. Leaving would only be a temporary escape. I would come back for senior year only to come up against another workload keeping me from living a balanced life. The best thing for me to do was stay here and do whatever I had to in order to get back to the balance I had during the summer. After deciding not to go abroad, I went from two majors to a major and a minor, took three classes in the fall, didn't worry about getting all my reading done and happily let my GPA drop.

So many people look forward to their time abroad as a vacation from Middlebury, when they can party it up for a semester with less homework and a lower drinking age. A better approach would be to find out what works for you so that your time at Midd doesn't make you want to run to the airport and flee to other countries your junior year. Whether it's reevaluating your academic goals, cutting back on extracurriculars you don't truly enjoy or refusing to let yourself sacrifice the stuff you really love, do it here instead of turning a semester abroad into a shining beacon of hope at the end of the tunnel. Barring the apocalypse, Spain will always be there and, come graduation, it really won't matter that I spent too much time at dinner instead of finishing "Moby Dick." Sorry, Professor Brayton.

Grace Duggan '09 is an Arts editor from New York, N.Y.