Town/gown

Author: Grady Ross

Several weeks ago, while exchanging small talk in the dining hall, I mentioned that I was from Middlebury. Overhearing me, a student interjected: "That's so great that you already consider Middlebury your home." I didn't correct her, but in truth, I wasn't being philosophical or praising the campus for its power to welcome students into its family. Born in Porter Hospital and raised eight miles from campus, I am a "townie" through and through.

The usual response to this is something like an insinuation that I'm slightly crazy. And I can understand this reaction: after all, isn't college about experiencing different things? As I moved my things in on the first day of orientation ("You forgot your duvet cover? Okay, your brother will bring it in on his way to school tomorrow"), I was confronted with the question of how to separate my college experience from the first 18 years of my life. But as I sought exposure to aspects of Middlebury that would be unique to my higher education, I found constant reminders that home was not so far away.

The start of classes would surely usher in a radically different period of my life -or so I believed. But as I looked up to the projection screen to take notes at my first lecture, my best friend from high school grinned down at me. His mother was my professor, and had included pictures of him in her presentation.

Perhaps, I thought, the social scene would free me from hometown blues. But a lecherous journey ended in a blow to my undergraduate invincibility: I was accosted one night by a Public Safety officer who reminded me, in a friendly but blood-chilling manner, that he knew my father.

My Russian professor handed me my diploma at graduation, my on-campus employer dated my mom in high school, my home course for my high school ski team was Bread Loaf and a nurse at the Health Center is the parent of a childhood friend. Must I go on? My college experience thus far has been infiltrated with connections to home: like the Hydra from Greek mythology, ties to my pre-college existence only seemed to grow more numerous with each one I cut off. In an attitude of defeat, I decided to embrace the inevitable.

As I ceased to resist, I had a revelation. As much as a local identity seems to inhibit my pursuit of new experiences, it also gives me an appreciation for being a student of this school. Higher education, for me, has always translated to Middlebury. Harvard? Yale? Never heard of them. Middlebury, on the other hand