The Observer, September 22, 2006
Volume XXXIX, Issue 4
One Foot Out the Door: Learning to run up a down escalator
It is hard to ignore what is consuming students these days: most seniors working on graduate applications or job resumes; juniors gearing up for another round of aptitude exams or core courses for their degrees; sophomores perhaps trying to plan a Junior Year Abroad; and freshman enjoying life away from home alongside the frustrations of managing a new place. At each level, there is an eagerness to develop yourself here, but also an ambition to go elsewhere.
One of the earliest written accounts to Europe about Egypt came in the mid 19th century in what are now known as "Flaubert's Letters." In his first letters, the French explorer writes about walking the streets of Cairo, and being overwhelmed by the fullness of everyday life, but also being frustrated that he cannot seem to manage it. He then decides to go up a minaret tower, to take a new perspective and somehow "get on top of it." As he winds up the spiral staircase, he stops at each floor to look through the window. His excitement increases as he looks down and begins to piece together the streets he seemed flooded by before. He reaches the top, looks out with great expectation, and is greatly disappointed. He has gone so far up, that when looks down on the street, all he sees are immobile specks seemingly without any life.
His experience seems much like that of many Case students: running up a down escalator–the top being the adventure of a new place (freshman year of college, graduate school, a job) and the bottom being commitments keeping you in one place (relationships, research, finances). The balancing act then becomes somehow finding yourself halfway up.
It is, however, not as simple as just locating the middle, but learning the pace of the escalator to neither outrun it, or let it outrun you. And somehow, in this dynamic of slowing down and speeding up–investing yourself here or trying to get elsewhere–to somehow negotiate both positions, college life latently teaches F. Scott Fitzgerald's understanding of intelligence: the ability to hold two opposing positions while maintaining the ability to function.
