When I was younger, MTV had me convinced that all college students spent their spring breaks standing around someplace with lots of palm trees, little clothing, and endless alcohol. Obviously, that’s just not the case. Not here, not elsewhere. ASB alone sent 16 service trips to sites across the country; others came up with their own un-stereoypical plans, everything from bumming around at home to going sailing in the Florida keys.
Wherever we went, there was one thing we all had in common: we were away from Northwestern. It’s not that campus is some evil, poisonous place — to me, it feels like home — but sometimes, you can’t really see your surroundings with any clarity when you’ve stared at them too long. The cliché you’ve heard so often about Northwestern being a bubble in fact has a lot of truth to it. (It’s pretty evident when you see students flocking to babies and dogs, as if they were strange alien creatures.) Without even noticing, we become enmeshed in the wash-rinse-repeat cycle of classes, cramming, complaining and going out one too many nights a week.
I spent spring break in Kauai, a tiny island in the Hawaiian chain that, because of its size and temperamental weather, is less popular than Maui. I guess no one wants to vacation in a place where rain clouds briefly but unpredictably interrupt the lazy, equator sun. Personally, I sort of like that chaos and capriciousness.
Arriving at the tiny airport in a crowd of haole, Hawaiian for foreigners, I felt I was invading this land so steeped in its own ancient culture. The frenzy of a baggage claim seemed fundamentally incompatible with the rain-eroded mountains, ribboned with white waterfalls, that framed every outdoor scene in a misted, almost-too-Kodak fashion. As soon as I greeted my two younger brothers and parents, though, it was as if my internal rhythm suddenly switched, adopting without hesitation the sing-songy, strumming pace of this place.
I could have lain on my back, appreciating the feel of sand and warm breeze, the salty air and the turquoise kai, or sea, for days on end. On a bit of a whim, though, I decided to try something I’ve always wanted to do: surfing. I’ve always been a bit of a landshark, Hawaiian slang for someone who loves the idea of surfing but doesn’t actually partake in the sport. I don’t even know what “hang ten” actually means. I always assumed that it was “high five’s” big brother: twice the fingers, and hanging, not high. But I’m pretty sure my interpretation has absolutely no merit.
Accordingly, even though I managed to catch a few waves before tumbling face first into the water, I mostly looked like a baby sloth trying to swim, scraping my knees and elbows on the surfboard, and getting briny and sunburnt. But whatever. Sloths are cool.
I’ll probably never break into the Evanston Surfing Club (a tight-knit group of 8 to 10 men and so maybe not such a good idea). But the few hours I spent bobbing in the big ocean were entirely worth making a little bit of a fool of myself, even considering that time a giant wave snuck up on me, sucking me into its saline washing machine where I tumbled around for what felt like forever.
As I drove back from my surfing attempts with my family, we listened to Island Radio 89.9, playing old-school Hawaiian music influenced by Jamaican style reggae and middle-school era R&B (“ooh baby it’s just you and me, let’s make tonight a re-al-ity”). Reflection music for sure. So I thought about how easy it is to get caught up in disappointments and imperfections — yeah, I kind of suck at surfing, I tan unevenly no matter how valiant my efforts, and I’m still stuck spending my spring breaks with my family, getting lei’d and not laid (breaking all the MTV Spring Break standards). But away from Northwestern and its army of rulers that persistently measure and quantify everything imaginable, all of this falling short is — surprisingly, relievedly — irrelevant.
Northwestern teaches us, or perhaps we teach each other, to constantly strive for concrete achievements and accomplishments, the kind that look nice on your Facebook “employment” section or a real-person resume. If I am ever disappointed with Northwestern, it is when I see things like kids more concerned with how a class looks on their transcript that what they are learning, or obsessing over a particular problem on an exam that they might have accidentally done wrong — so caught up in details that they don’t appreciate how lovely the Lake Michigan is at sunset, or what good people their friends are. When you’re so focused on the small things, you miss the whole point. Yes, it’s easy to be oblivious to the big picture here, with our whirlwind storm of opportunities and obligations, but it’s the biggest mistake you can make.
For me, it took looking through the lens of the slow-paced, family-oriented beach culture of Kauai to see the superficiality of the numbers we attach to everything here. Think about it: you can’t write an essay without getting a grade assigned to it, go out to eat without mentally balancing your budget, or use your laptop without reflexively checking how many new notifications you have on Facebook. We might be past comparing our SAT and ACT scores, but we’re still more obsessed (more…)