Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: You can't go home again
By Lisa Mendelman
The Stanford Daily (Stanford)
12/01/2006

(U-WIRE) STANFORD, Calif. — For many of you, this depressing adage probably reared its head early last week as you traveled across the country to eat at your parents' dining room table and sleep amid your old stuffed animals. For me, however, these famous words have a slightly different meaning. After all, as I revealed last week, my parents' house is literally down the street (albeit a very long one).

Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

The words of Robert Frost echoed in my mind this past September when I returned to the Farm to earn my master's in English. After two years in the real world, the open arms of this home — my home away from home — looked more appealing than ever.

On the surface, little has changed in the past three years. Palm Drive is still gorgeous, the Quad is still standing and the bicycles are still everywhere (though, thanks to a new policy, not around the Quad).

But as I drove toward the familiar sandstone buildings on my first day of class, I felt strikingly out of place. What was it that had changed so much? If it wasn't Stanford, then it had to be me. Given that, I wondered, would I ever be comfortable in the nest again?

I parked atop the repaved Encina tennis courts and ambled in the general direction of Encina Hall. According to my thoroughly highlighted Time Schedule (some things never change), my first graduate seminar was to meet in Encina W206. Too proud to ask for directions, I wandered the halls for 20 minutes before I located the room.

Three years as a tour guide and I still got lost on my way to class.

When class introductions began a few moments later, the surreal quality of my experience deepened. I felt old. At 24, I was the second-eldest student in the program and, thanks to two years of teaching high school English, I held more professional experience than five-sixths of the class combined.

Following introductions, the professor initiated a discussion about academia, the humanities and the university's connection to the world at large. One student waxed poetic about the emotional value of beauty while another unequivocally announced that the study of the humanities "makes good people."

As much as I wanted to agree with them on principle, I was painfully aware of a different reality. Compared to life in the frenzied trenches of a high school classroom, the peaceful bubble in which we sat seemed insignificant and unproductive. In the grand scheme of things, the discussion itself seemed trivial. "Who am I helping?" I kept thinking. "What am I contributing to the world by being here?"

I walked toward the Bookstore with these difficult questions ringing in my ears. The helmetless bikers speeding by were no longer my friends and classmates, and their blissful faces only furthered my sense of alienation.

"Miss M!"

I turned to see a former student of mine.

"Ashley! How are you?"

"I'm great. Overwhelmed and under-slept, but great."

As I listened to her talk about IHUM, PWR and life in Branner, I heard a familiar experience underlying the updated acronyms and renovated housing. The excitement of encountering new ideas, the thrill of discovering academic passions, the sheer joy of living in a community of caring, impassioned individuals — this was the Stanford University I'd come back to find.

A man's homeland is wherever he prospers.

Inspired by my conversation with Ashley and mindful of Aristophanes (the author of the quote above), I determined to seek out opportunities that would put me back in touch with the ecstasy of discovery. Although I know Margaret Jacks like the back of my hand, I enrolled in classes taught by three professors I'd never met, and this quarter marks my first English class with more men than women. I applied to write a column for The Daily, something I'd always wanted to do as an undergrad (seriously), and I joined a grad student reading group. Among these new configurations of the Stanford community, I have found the intellectual passions I'd missed so sorely over the past three years.

OK, that was a bit melodramatic, I know, but I bet many of you encountered the same truth last week: you don't know what you've got until it's gone. For all the stress-inducing finals and term papers, Stanford and its sun-drenched version of home will look just as comforting and luxurious in a few years as your high school bed does now.

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

There are still moments when I feel a strong urge to facilitate a classroom discussion rather than participate in it, when I wonder how deciphering Derrida will impact the rest of my life, when I feel acutely aware of the real world that awaits me in June, but my distance from and anxiety about the present have given way to sheer gratitude for the chance to be here right now.

Walking through the Quad yesterday, I ran in to another former student of mine. "Isn't it weird to be back here?" she asked.

"Sort of," I said, "but there's no place like home."

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