12 hours on Amtrak

Three days ago, I contacted my boss, Viewpoint Editor Liam Price, with a pitch. I would write a piece on the Amtrak home, and submit it by the end of my 12-hour journey. He accepted. The following is a reflection on the first half of my first semester of college.

…

I was sitting on a rusty seat in the mild autumn temperatures on the outskirts (or what I presumed to be the outskirts) of South Bend. I was outside the Amtrak station. The thinly painted cinder block building was closed, but the lights were on inside. I arrived early — way too early.

Luckily, a few others arrived, some were the people I had come to call friends over the past seven weeks. We exchanged the basic Notre Dame introduction before diving into smaller conversations about the people we knew or how tea shouldn’t be considered caffeine (I am a tea drinker). I boarded and took my place on the train. It’s where I am writing you this message, shaking and rumbling east, toward home.

Home is a topic I’ve thought about a lot lately. As someone with intense ties to my town, the feeling that Notre Dame is now my home is a new experience. I adapted relatively quickly to thinking about Alumni Hall as a neighborhood. I have neighbors, some closer than others. Most are friends in one way or another. As I rumble down these tracks, I feel like I’m away from home for the first time. I haven’t traveled alone before.

As I crystalize my perspective on my short stint so far, I place events along an impossible timeline. Welcome Weekend was in August. It was a lifetime ago. I have not seen my family in seven weeks. I used to see them every day. I have watched the school that was the place I became myself continue without me.

I look back at the many embarrassing things that have happened over the past seven weeks. It starts with awkwardly shaking my roommate’s hand in a Walmart and ends with two people rounding a corner to see me recording my Survivor audition video. Many of them have been my fault. I haven’t felt the cringe. Perhaps it is my refusal to acknowledge the emotion or a lack of shame. I have still reached out to people. Despite this, I have developed my strongest bonds. My experience would be very different if I felt more embarrassed.

For the past seven weeks, I cannot claim to have done a lot well. I have the lowest GPA I have ever had. I embarrassed myself countless times. I nearly crashed into multiple bikers. My ability to navigate is worse than the Grubhub robots. 

There is one thing I am proud of: I have been myself. I know that not everyone has the luxury of making that statement. Over the past two months or so, I have been goofy, foolish and wholly honest. It is what truly matters.

Perhaps this has been a test from God. Just to tell me that identity and personality are not defined by quantitative success, even if our environment tells us to feel that way. I can’t say that I have fully passed and risen above worldly success. I am not going to drop out and move to a cabin in the woods (yet).

While I have stayed the same, I activated my social side in a way that I had not before. I have become more spontaneous, ditching my bedtime when I want to entertain that weird concept called living. I took every encounter to its maximum. I kept searching for new people and new experiences, even when it was socially beneficial to walk away. If I had, I would not have met many people. I would not have been walking around campus at two in the morning on a Friday night. I would not have tailgated or said hello to former strangers on the quad.

The train is shaking as it takes me to my home. One of them.