The professor looked down at my personal statements, each changed just a little depending on the school. She asked: “How do you keep track of it all?”

“I forget people’s names.” I replied. Then she laughed because she did it to.

This semester is my last at Puget Sound so I have been trying to figure out what comes next. The question what comes next is a scary one for any senior. The fear it brings on is almost cliché by now. It feels a little like being the guy in the Matrix when he is getting ready to take the blue pill. Only in this case the blue pill is mandatory. You can’t stay in college forever. One day you’re going to have close your dorm room door behind you, give your keys to the RA, and then ask them back because you realize you forgot your shower caddy. But after that you’re still going to have to leave. You are going to have to answer the question of what’s next.

Me, I’m applying for a lot of things, both jobs and graduate schools, and hoping I get one of them. So far, this has been like crawling up a mountain of paper work. I have documents on my computer titled “List of Schools and Deadlines,” “Schools and Codes for the GRE,” “Transcript Policies,” and “Record of Submission.” After I finish writing this post I’m going to have to go to the registrar and ask them to email me a copy of my unofficial transcript because the one I tried getting off the UPS website wouldn’t upload to the graduate school website. Good times.

My strategy for dealing with this is three fold.

One) I forget people’s names. I called my suitemate Aidan instead of Adrian multiple times even after I’d been living with him for half a semester. Anything in my brain that is non-essential gets jettisoned.

Two) Writing myself little notes on scraps of paper and leaving them on my desk to find later. Some notes I have now are “GPA—3.82 + Transcripts” and “letters.” The first is a reminder for me to make sure that I entered my GPA as 3.82 on all of my applications. The second is a reminder to make sure that each of my professors who I asked to write me a letter of recommendation has the correct link.

Three) I take deep breaths. I had a stressful day yesterday and I woke up in the middle of last night with a huge knot in my chest. So I concentrated on breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. To be honest, I could benefit from doing this more often. It gets lost in the scuffle sometimes. Over Thanksgiving break, that’s what I’m going to do next. I’m going to breathe.

In six days—yes I am counting!—I will be fling home for Thanksgiving, and the season’s got me thinking about what I am grateful for. And what I realized, strange as it may seem, is that I am grateful for the chance I have been given to work my butt off. I have worked harder academically this semester than I think I can ever remember working. I have read hundreds of pages of complex social theory, history and politics. I have had to think deeply and critically every day. It’s been really, really hard.
And I’d like to say thank you for it.
I love to learn. I get a natural high from complex conversations. And this semester I have been given the chance to learn a great deal, and see the connections between things that I never would have before.
One of my courses, the Latin American Travel Seminar on Cuba, is not generally marketed to sophomores. I’s an upper level course usually reserved for juniors and seniors, because it’s such a heavy workload. I begged the professor, who I had for a history class last year, to let me in.
“You’ll have to work hard. Really hard. It will be your hardest class, and probably harder than anything else you’ll have taken here,” he said.
He was right, of course. It dos have more reading than any other class I have ever had here at UPS, but the readings are so interesting I don’t mind. I pause halfway through my readings as I sit in my living room, my favorite yellow highlighter in hand, and read passages out loud o my housemate and best friend, saying, “isn’t that awesome?” She usually says yes and then reminds me that she is studying too and therefore cannot be interrupted to hear about my homework.
This is what college si about, I think. Finding something you are passionate about and giving yourself to it. I love being a student, because my role in society is to explore ideas.
And that is a wonderful gift. Not everyone will receive that gift, and I recognize that I am privileged to be at an institution where I can be challenged, and to have professors who care enough to push me to be a better writer and thinker. All of my professors, not just the Cuba ones, have helped me to grow this semester and given me the personalized attention that I hoped for when I came to UPS. They’ve given m access to books, movies and articles that have broadened my horizons, and then talked to me about those things as I developed thoughts and opinions about them.
I’m so lucky to have that. So this Thanksgiving, among all the other things I will say thank you for, I am going to make sure to send out thanks for the heavy textbooks and the long nights.

Today I woke up at five thirty to drive up to Seattle and take the GRE. I had to wake up this early because I tend to get lost and because there is a lot of traffic in going through Seattle. There was stop and go traffic on the freeway at six thirty. It was still dark out so all I could really see were streams of red and gold headlights. I pity the poor commuters who have to take that route every morning. It reminded me of what a modern take on Dante’s “neutral” level in hell might be like, bummer to bummer traffic going nowhere.

Luckily, I got to the test center in plenty of time and almost without incident. This was my first time driving in Seattle and I was borrowing my suitemate’s car, which was so big it felt more like driving a boat. Normally, I drive a Prius so I found this quite daunting. I had brought both a GPS and printed directions. It was a good thing I did because the GPS gave out on me about a quarter of the way through and I didn’t have the dexterity to get it going again while driving. So what I tried to do instead was hold the directions up so I could read them. This caused me to swerve dramatically in my lane and then overcorrect. It was at this point on the journey where I reflected that when I had thought to myself “I’ll be there to take the GRE if it kills me” that I hadn’t really meant this literally. A two hundred dollar test isn’t worth dying over. Aside from that, everything went fine and I actually arrived early.

The GRE itself was, in some ways, a lot less stressful than the drive up. It had helped that I had studied before and I knew what to expect. There was a GRE course at the writing center that I had been taking. It gave me a refresher on some of the math concepts, which were basically what I had done in middle school and early high school, only now I had forgotten them all. But because I took the course I was able to remember enough to get a passable score. I wasn’t applying for a math related program so it only had to be just that, passable. My verbal score turned out quite well. I did a few practice sets before so I knew what the questions looked like. In some ways, the GRE is an endurance test. You can’t bring food into the testing room and you only get one ten minute break during the four hours you are there. By the time I got back I was ready to start gnawing on whatever I could find.

But in the end, I did well. My GRE score, if not an asset, at least shouldn’t be an impediment to getting into graduate school. More importantly, however, I’ll never have to take the test again. No more multiple choice questions with more than one answer, no more trying to figure out which quantity is greater, and best of all, no waking up at five thirty to sit in traffic for two hours.

Saying that the past few days have been a bit rainy is probably as big of an understatement that anyone could make. This sun-spoiled Southern California boy has just about drowned in Puget Sound’s most recent onslaught of blustering downpours. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely enjoy the rain, but having to be outside as the heavens open isn’t my favorite.

Bogged down with writing a draft of my thesis, I took a coffee break in Oppenheimer mid-morning on Friday. While I don’t normally do much work in either of our campus cafés, the urgency of my looming Monday due date for the draft necessitated that my coffee break included a bit of work.

Gray Skies in Oppenheimer

With friends coming and going as I tried to get work done, I definitely wasn’t the most productive, but I was certainly reminded of what a beautiful campus we have. Just an hour before, I was fuming with disdain for the stormy weather, but watching the rain from inside of the glass dome gave me an entirely new perspective. There is something so relaxing about watching drops of rain stream down the full glass windows as you sip on a latte, even if it means you won’t get much work done. I think the lesson learned was that when I’m down about the weather, all I really need to do is grab a coffee Opp. Now if only they opened on the weekends….

There’s nothing quite as disconcerting as not being able to see. Think about it.

You’re a kid and you’re goofing around with your siblings on the family room floor. Your dauntless six-year-old-self is standing ground like a champ, wailing on the others with pillows that send them to the floor in a flurry of defeat. You’re invincible. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you notice a faint movement. It all happens so fast and there’s nothing you can do about it. Your older, bigger brother sneaks around your blindside and jumps on you from the couch with a big, black comforter in his hands. He knocks you over and covers you with the blanket, wrapping you up tight in it, cementing you to the ground by sitting on you in triumph. You have been bested.

Under the blanket however, things aren’t all fun and games. You open your eyes and the smile disappears from your face. It’s dark, you can’t see, you can’t move your hands, and worst of all, your brother will not get off. You’re terrified. You get hysterical. You start thrashing around like a hooked fish, but to no avail. Eventually after minutes of this, you are forced to give up and accept your fate. You’re going to die down there under the blanket, in the dark, alone, tormented by eternal carpet burn.

Ok, over dramatization, I know. But now maybe you understand my first point.

Columbia River via Highway 12

Not too long ago, I had the opportunity to go caving with Puget Sound Outdoors on a weekend trip to the Panther Creek Cave. This cave is near the Oregon border, not too far from the Columbia River Gorge, and according to the Internet, it’s the world’s 34th longest lava tube. Pretty legendary, I know. To put it simply; I was stoked.

But nothing could prepare me for the experience of actually being inside the cave. Up until that day, my knowledge of caves was rather scantily-based upon Indiana Jones movies, and let me tell you, those caves are not real. Now, I know that caves are cold, clammy, wet, dark, and often very difficult to traverse, but nevertheless, the whole experience was a blast.

Walter pondering the perils of the cave

If I were to look back on the trip, I’d be able to point out many moments as favorites, but there’s one that stands out in particular. After being underground for a few hours or so, we’d decided to take a snack break. We had come from a narrower portion into a very spacious, tall chamber that caused even our Pop Tart wrappers to echo off the walls and carry along the tunnel. The 4% of me that wanted to be a geologist was doing backflips in my mind.

Galen pensively considering the philosophy of lava tubes

The best moment was yet to come, however. Eventually the banter died down and the group became silent. Then, someone spoke up saying, “Let’s turn off our headlamps”, and the group unanimously agreed. The next couple minutes were some of the most interesting minutes I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing. I’ve never not been able to see my hand in front of my face before. The only contact I had with the cave, and with my group, were my feet touching the rocky floor. Truly indescribable, really.

Cave babes one and all

So, in case you were curious, I would highly, highly, highly recommend checking out a cave. Whether it be through PSO or not, caving makes for some great experiences, stories, and sights… or not.

Happy trails,

Colton Born