I am half way into my second semester, and it still has not sunk in that I am here. A year and a half ago, if you would have told me I would be getting a master’s degree from Yale University, I would have laughed at you and told you to put down your joint. Sometimes I walk down the streets and I catch myself thinking, “These buildings look like something you would see at an Ivy League school,” and then, I remember that, holy shit, I AM at an Ivy League school! There are days when I walk down Chapel Street or cross the New Haven Green and I still can’t believe I moved all the way across the country to New England. It’s like I am walking around in a dream.
When I meet new people back home, I still have trouble telling them where I go to school. The conversations go something like this.
New person “So, what do you do?”
Me: ”I am a grad student”
New person: “So where do you go to school?”
Me: ”Connecticut”
New Person: ”Really? Where?”
Me: ”New Haven”
New Person: ”No, what school?”
Me: ”Um……..Yale.”
I hate having those conversations, for two reasons. The first being the weird look I get anytime I tell someone where I go to school (like I am some kind of snob or alien), and the second being that I feel like I am a fraud. A fake. A phony. Even though I’m not…..something about it feels weird. Sometimes I have to pinch myself because I feel like I am living somebody else’s life. Only I’m not. It’s mine. I am really here. That Yale sweatshirt hanging in my closet actually does belong to me.
Believe it or not, sometimes dreams really do come true.
When I lived in California, weather.com used to be my best friend. We would talk every single day. He would always tell me the most delightful bits of information, such as “It’s going to be 80 degrees in January today!” Then I moved to Connecticut, and things changed between us. I am not really sure what I did to piss him off, but he started being very rude to me and saying things like “It feels like 8 degrees today,” or “you will be pelted in the face with rain and slush.” It got to the point where I just couldn’t take his negativity any longer, so we stopped talking. It is really hard to be friends with someone who always brings you down, so I figured it was better for the both of us, if we just cut contact for a while. Sure, I would hear things about him through mutual friends. They would tell me how he was doing, or what he was up to, and it was always more of the same. That is, until today. I woke up this morning to a strange sensation. The sun was shining though my window. It made me really nostalgic for my old friend. I wasn’t sure how he was going to react, given our recent troubles, but I decided to contact him despite it all. Typing my zip code on his website made me really nervous. Was he going to reject me? Do I dare look at the 10 day forecast for fear of being shunned? Turns out I think we are going to be ok. For the first time in a long while, my pal actually gave me some good news. It’s true, we have a lot of patching up to do. There are wounds to be healed and bridges to be mended, but I think we are going to make it. Granted we are not as close as we were when I was back home, but I think that weather.com and I have gotten through our rough patch. There may be some times where we will fight, and the road to Spring may be a rocky one, but when it’s all said and done, its really nice to have my old friend back.
