Wednesday, March 18, 2020 // The Statement
2B
Managing Statement Editor
Magdalena Mihaylova
Deputy Editors
Emily Stillman
Marisa Wright
Associate Editor
Reece Meyhoefer
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Liz Bigham
Kate Glad
Copy Editors
Madison Gagne
Sadia Jiban
Photo Editor
Keemya Esmael
Editor in Chief
Elizabeth Lawrence
Managing Editor
Erin White
M
y feet were up on the dashboard of the
passenger seat in my roommate Kevin’s 2015
Subaru Forester. The sun was beginning
to set as we drove back from Atlanta. We were listening
to a crime podcast, an iced coffee by my side. We were
somewhere in rural Ohio, a few hours from a return to
Ann Arbor for the final semester of college, a time that
is supposed to be pure, unencumbered by worry, loosely
jovial. It’s the time — the last time — to live and learn
before reality smacks you in the face like a stiff board.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through Twitter
and came across an article written for the University of
Missouri website by Wright Thompson, one of the greatest
writers on this planet. As I was reading through the piece,
I came across a line that blew me away.
I read it once. Paused. Took a breath. Looked up. Then I
read it a few more times:
Sometimes it feels like we spend 45 percent of our lives
trying to be something, 10 percent of our lives being it and
45 percent having been it.
I thought about the prescience of reading that during
my trip back up to Ann Arbor for the last round of the
happiest era of my life. I thought about the call to action
that phrase inadvertently makes: to live deliberately but
conscientiously, to strive for more but appreciate what’s
right there, to allow a healthy dose of nostalgia without
letting it consume you, to appreciate who you are instead
of obsessing over who — or what — you’d like to be.
Thinking back to that moment now, there is a cruel
irony in how everything has unfolded. This was supposed
to be a self-reflective piece about the anxiety of constantly
living in search of a destination. It was meant to be a sober
confrontation of how we live our lives and what we value.
I was going to delve into my personal fears about life after
college, finding the right career and landing on my feet. I
wanted to explore this flawed instinct we have to always
set goals and how that breeds a lack of appreciation for the
present. These were my primary worries no less than a
week ago.
That irony is cruel because this past week we had our
final moments of college ripped away from us due to the
coronavirus outbreak: our last stretch of classes, our final
months with friends, social gatherings, livelihoods and
our graduation — all gone.
I have tears welled up in my eyes as I’m writing this. I
don’t know which of my friends I’ve possibly seen for the
last time. My family doesn’t get to come to the Big House
and take pictures with me in my cap and gown. Instead
of triumph, the best four years of my life are ending with
an inauspicious, premature departure from a deserted
campus, as I abide by an encouraged evacuation of a place
I will always call home.
I was supposed to write this about the dichotomy of
marrying our short-term aspirations with the macro
visions we have for our lives.
But sometimes, life happens.
I
didn’t know I had anxiety
until I came to college. I was
dumped into a pool of 40,000
people and was told to swim, and
for a while I merely treaded water.
I know I’m not alone in that — if
anything, that makes my experience
quite consistent with the student
body.
I suppose that discomfort teaches
you how to find yourself. That’s
the only way to discover who you
are. We must venture into that big,
bold unknown to emerge a more
complete person.
These idealistic cliches are both
true and supremely unhelpful for
a lonely freshman searching for
purpose. We’re told this romantic
tale
about
what
college
was
supposed to be and so I grew increasingly frustrated by
the stagnation of my personal growth. Why isn’t this what
it needs to be? My brain became flooded with thoughts
and doubts and confusion, and that began to cripple me.
I came to the University of Michigan knowing one
person on campus, and even he was relatively new to
my life. I didn’t know what I wanted to study or what I
wanted to become. Having grown up in small, tight-knit
communities all my life, I secretly harbored fears that I
wouldn’t cut it outside those bubbles. I joined a fraternity
to quell some of the lurking social anxiety I wasn’t truly
ready to confront and I worried that Greek life would
change who I was. I missed home. I longed, quietly and
unassumingly, for the comforts of what I knew.
It feels peculiar, then, to be writing this next to my
girlfriend and my four-year roommate in an off-campus
coffee shop — completely heartbroken that, three and a
half years later, it’s over. Just like that, it’s over. The people,
the places, the city that made this the best four years of
my life. All of it now lurks as a past tense in the narrative
of my life.
Nostalgia is healthy. But man, I just wasn’t ready for it
yet.
Thompson’s words pierced me on that drive. They still
do. I worry that as my peers and I strive for these high-
achieving, high-minded lives, we miss the forest for the
trees.
We miss the days we spent hanging out on the couch
watching “The Bachelor” over a few beers. We miss the
evenings in the library spent cracking jokes instead of
studying. We miss the nights spent at 420 Maynard St.,
talking about life and University of Michigan sports and
everything and nothing at all. We’d lose track of how many
games of euchre we’d played and pretended to bemoan
waking up early for our 8:30 a.m. classes the next day, as if
we weren’t eager to do the same thing the very next night.
We miss the road trips to far-off Big Ten cities, driving
through the night as we played the most obscure music
in our Spotify library — then stealing some dumb prop
from the bowels of a football stadium and carrying it to
the rental car like a goddamn trophy. We miss the meals
shared. We miss the nights out. We miss those first days
of spring after a long winter, the first day we get the “all-
clear” to wear shorts. And we’d take the grill out of the
garage. We’d play music and toss a football. We didn’t have
a care in the world.
Instead, we strain over internships and jobs. We
complain about drama with friends. We bitch and moan
and stress. Anything to get the grade. Anything to keep
moving in a direction we’re told is “forward.” We get
so bogged down in the stressors of a life we know to be
brutally unpredictable.
Nothing is a better reminder of that fragility than a
global pandemic taking over the world, upending our daily
lives and threatening our health. The past few days have
forced a kind of reflection I wasn’t prepared for. I’m sure
many of my fellow seniors would say the same.
I don’t want to spend 45 percent of my life trying to
be something and the other 45 percent having been
something. But in order to spend 100 percent of our lives
being ourselves, we have to become comfortable with the
imperfections and incongruities life will bring. We have
to dare to live optimistically and without fear. In this long
journey of life, we have to find the beauty in the ordinary.
statement
THE MICHIGAN DAILY | MARCH 18 , 2020
BY MAX MARCOVITCH, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
How Michigan taught me to live
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE