A Week Out

A week ago today I left home for the third time in three years. I must say, I was much more excited about it when I left three years ago than I was this time around. But when I got here this last Sunday evening after visiting with my aunt for the weekend, I was happy to be "home".

Truly, I've greatly missed Annapolis and all her charms. I'd forgotten how different the East Coast is from the South. The pace is different. The people are different. Part of that is because I live in a huge tourist attraction; and especially this time of year, there are tourists crawling all around downtown Annapolis. (Thankfully most of them avoid SJC -- I guess we're not as "cool" as the Naval Academy. Or at least we're not as impressive to look at, lacking the sharp, tailored uniforms of the midshipmen.) Of course, some of that can be accounted for in the disparate sizes of Annapolis and Martin -- Annapolis is more than five times the size of Martin -- but some of it definitely is an intangible air that comes with being more than 300 years old and surrounded by the Chesapeake. And of course, there's the veneer and subtle arrogance of wealth here that is noticeably lacking in a small town.

Last night I had an hour-and-a-half-long discussion with my roommate that would have sent most people screaming from the room after only fifteen minutes, assuming they could have made heads or tails of what we were talking about. Ah, Johnnies! What a breed apart you are -- not because you're necessarily any better, but because you're so deliciously different from the rest of the world. Where else could you debate Kant's principle of non-contradiction at eleven-thirty at night? Where else would someone under the age of forty even know what that was? Where else would you find 18- and 20-year-olds more likely to be discussing the philosophies of long-dead Greeks than the latest Hollywood gossip? Where else would you find students willing to go to class at eight pm, and voluntarily go to a lecture on Friday night? There's not much of the practical and concrete at SJC, but that's one of the reasons I love it. There's a dark side to it, too, but for today I'm content to just enjoy the bright side.

(And thank you to this website for the pictures of the Naval Academy (top) and St. John's (bottom, it's the dorm where I used to live.))