October 9, 2014
Less than two months ago, I was living and studying in Beijing. It was only for less than two months, but now, the distance between Hamilton and Beijing seems like the distance between the moon and Mars, and two months might as well have been two years. Almost 10 months ago, I set out from LAX knowing that I was about to do something that would change my life forever, for better or for worse. And I, like many Hamilton students before me, had a truly amazing time abroad, the sort of experience that you would not give up for the world. And I, like many Hamilton students before me, have had a difficult time transitioning back to life on the Hill.
Living in China has transformed me into a person I had never imagined I could be. I learned to be resourceful, independent, flexible and, above all, grateful for all of the good things I have in life. The people I met in China will stay with me for the rest of my life, from the wisecracking teacher who may be the one person in China who understands sarcasm, to the old man ready to spend our 28-hour train ride giving us ACC students a lecture on Confucian ideology, to my roommate in the hostel who fooled her friend into cursing in front of me, to the old woman in the nursing home who answered every question with some variation of “I don’t need to worry about this nonsense, I’m old.” The people I met and the experiences I shared with them are things that I can never forget; they are tangible, amazing and real. I lived in another world, a world so different from Hamilton that while it will always be a part of who I am, sometimes it feels like it never happened at all.
It is so incredibly difficult to go from life abroad back to life at Hamilton. Many students report anxiety, depression, discontent and a general feeling of “being over” Hamilton College after they return to campus. As good as being at Hamilton College is, for many students it just is not enough anymore. Why? What is it that makes coming back to a place that many of us loved and enjoyed before leaving so difficult? Most would point to how fun and liberating being abroad can be. You lived alone and went out on the town every night in Paris? Awesome! You were able to drink wherever you wanted and never once got carded in Argentina? Sweet! You climbed the Great Wall of China? So cool! You hear things like this constantly when you tell stories of your time abroad. When you go from living in another country and being in complete control of your life to living in the middle of nowhere and limited by college policy, of course you are going to be a little bit cranky. But I do not think that is the full picture here. At least, that is not my entire reason.
The reason I believe that coming back to Hamilton is so hard is that when you are abroad you are experiencing for the first time what the real world is like. You get to see the big picture, what is going on outside of America. Much of my time in Beijing and the rest of China was not pretty. I saw horrific poverty, human rights violations, social disparity, corruption—you name it.
I lived in an environment so polluted that there was a whole week when you could not see a building 20 feet away from you because the smog was so thick. My time in China was far from perfect. China is far from perfect. There are problems everywhere that everyone can see, though they may only talk about them in certain safe circles. But the point is that they see them. The thing that I miss most about Beijing is that it was the real world. There were problems, yes, but everyone could see and talk about them. Hamilton College is not the real world. It is pretty, clean, and it looks like nothing is wrong. But that is just the surface. There are many issues that exist at Hamilton College. The problem is that in this Stepford Wives-esque controlled reality, few people even realize that there are any issues. How can we fix issues if we cannot see them?
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