“Mom, why are all these street lights so tiny and why are all of these houses connected?” asked my freshman self as my family drove me up Calvert Street for the first time. Yes, I was 18 years old when I saw my first rowhouse, and I was 20 when I moved into one. Not going to lie, I still think rowhouses are weird. It’s like an apartment and a normal, free-standing house had an awkward lovechild. The funny thing is that I’ve come to love them. Nothing beats firing up the grill on your second story front porch and grilling a bunch of steaks with your friends on a breezy summer day in Baltimore. Plus, I was always jealous of my elementary school friend Bryce whose house was three stories and had a laundry chute. Now after having both of these things, I worry I’ve peaked too soon. My relationship with rowhouses is a microcosm for my relationship with Baltimore as a whole.
If you were paying attention to the Opinions section of The News-Letter last week, you may remember my piece about moving back home to Austin. If you know anything about Austin, or even if you don’t, I bet its not hard to imagine that it’s pretty different down there. This city and my soon-to-be alma mater were quite the culture shock for a guy who thought it was normal to wear bow ties and blazers to parties.
Thankfully, I believe I was fairly quick to adapt to life at Hopkins and in Baltimore at large. Unlike many of my graduating peers, I’m not claiming that I have any sort of wisdom, quite the contrary in fact, but I can think of a few things that I’ve done right and some of the bigger lessons I’ve learned from them.
First, the things that mattered to me as a freshman are totally unimportant now and the things that I used to scoff at now occupy my mind more than anything else. I was all about building relationships as a freshman. I couldn’t care less about summer internships or my future path through life. I was living for the moment at hand, and honestly I wouldn’t take that back. This period helped me establish all of the friendships I’ll have for life, and that is one of the most undervalued aspects of attending a university like Hopkins. These are the friends who will keep you grounded throughout life, invite you to their weddings and, God willing, even provide your children with internships someday. Your people are invaluable, and it is all too easy to underestimate their impact.
My sophomore and junior year were about personal and academic growth. I wasn’t tackling the big questions yet, but I also wasn’t neglecting the future entirely. These are the exploration years. I had two internships during this period that showed me two distinct career paths that I don’t want to go down, and I believed that taking the risks I did as early as I did saved me from chasing a dream I didn’t actually want.
The end of the junior summer marks the beginning of the average student’s quarter-life crisis. You can’t run away from real life anymore at this point. That terrifying “What am I going to do with my life?” question that has been so easy to defer will stare you in the face until it’s temporarily answered with a job offer or graduate school acceptance letter. The time for exploration has been replaced by the time for major life decisions, and trust me, once the dust settles and the smoke clears, you have a decent plan for your young adulthood in place, you won’t fear graduating anymore (if you did in the first place).
In summary, four years at Hopkins fly by at a dizzying pace. There is so much more to do, see and learn at school and in this city than any student is equipped to embrace. It may not feel like it, but we’re all on our way out, whether we like it or not. All we can do is engage with as much as we can handle.
Will Marcus is a senior International Studies and political science double major from Austin, Texas. He is the Opinions Editor.
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