Bubbles

The WashU bubble.

I've heard this phrase, this simile, this phenomenon many times, but the meaning has changed:

Freshman year; I blew it off quickly as a mere philosophy to keep an open mind regardless of where you are. I was happy to get out of state, excitedly jumping into many new things, submerging myself into the new college campus, that couldn't possibly be more different from something as "isolating" as a bubble.

Sophomore year: I realized that it was more serious than what I initially thought as a freshman. It showed that outside of the WashU campus, there are many very real (and oh so very ugly) things that are happening around the world. The fact that it is hard for me to see these events merely shows the shielding effect that WashU has. The result? I have reverted back to reading the newspaper.

Junior year: Getting to know people even better, and going beyond simple surface level conversation, many attitudes, hidden from me before (or simply went unnoticed by me), now shown by people I care about, people I call good friends, close friends, really rang home for me. The state of being at WashU, what being a WashU student means, the definition of quitting, inner reflection, personal choices, the future- all things that I've NEVER needed to worry about, things that went unconsidered in light of extracurriculars and just school work. No longer am I swamped with said trivial matters.

As someone very close to me has told me before: "Book smarts and academia are merely the brick used to break the window of opportunity; people smarts and social skills are what give you the ability to seize the opportunity, once you hop through that window." I look back at my life, my experiences, my "career" thus far, and I realize that I am a poster child of the WashU Bubble, "shielded" from the latter two of the trifecta: "the Good, the Bad and the Ugly" of the real world.