My New Home

I moved in to my apartment in Syracuse on Friday, and today at Orientation I toured the place I’ll call home for the next year: the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

I must admit, before Orientation, I was feeling pretty low. In my empty apartment, all I could think about was how I was truly alone: there literally wasn’t a single person I knew in Syracuse.

Eventually, though, I had a thought that made me feel better. This won’t be like my freshman year at Princeton. Sure, it’s unfamiliar here, and I’ll need to deal with a lot of non-academic things — like driving in an unfamiliar city and making myself meals — but my assignments will be different from the countless research papers and essays I wrote as an undergrad. And instead of finishing my career by completing a thesis, I’ll be doing an internship or working hard on the prototype of an iPad magazine that could actually be sold in the iTunes Store.

Yes, I’ll need to interview people, and yes, I’ll need to complete my work under deadline, but at least I won’t need to spend more hours holed up in library carrel or my cramped dorm room, paging through dusty library books and trying to motivate myself to write another ten pages. 

That was exhausting. This, I hope, will be energizing.