I’ve always loved bubbles. But maybe my fondness for them isn’t just because of their seemingly magical qualities—it’s because I live in one.
Puerto Rico, the island in the Caribbean I call home, only has a little more than three million inhabitants within its 3,515 square miles. Everyone I know knows each other, looks alike, and holds similar values and beliefs.
In my town specifically, every student goes to one of five schools and will eventually live right next to everyone they have ever known. I loved it, and I still do, but within the beauty of my innocently iridescent bubble, I never saw the world for what it truly was.
But, my bubble popped the moment my parents left my dorm, and I was officially living outside the safety of my soapy enclosure.
Seven months later, I can hardly recognize the girl standing in Duchesne West with tears streaming down her face. She looks more or less the same, except maybe a little tanner. She hopes to graduate as an analyst, and she’s undoubtedly terrified of a Boston winter.
I was told that college is where you meet your best friends, pull all-nighters, encounter your future spouse, and have a wild time. But I was also told that college is where you find yourself. I thought this idea was an urban legend. I stood tall with a clear image of my future in mind, and I wondered what there was left to find.
If I could talk to that girl seven months ago, I’d tell her that she was about to discover so many parts of herself she didn’t know. Better yet, she would rediscover parts of herself she had glanced over but had never taken the time to love or even fully understand.
I was prepared for college in the social sense. I tried to be friendly to everyone and went out of my way to talk to people who did not run in my immediate circle. By September, I had already met who I’d be spending most lunches with and the girls I’d be living with the following year.
I was nowhere near ready for the flash floods of media and new information I’d find myself struggling to swim in. I came in as a business analytics major and journalism minor, but after two Intro to Economics lectures, I declared to my mother that I was going to switch my major. After a single business law class, I became resolute in following a pre-law path.
After the club fair, I was on the email list of at least twenty clubs and had already discarded another twenty. While registering for courses, my counselor had to carefully walk me back from overloading. It was like whiplash. Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be something that drew my attention, captivated my passion for learning, or took my thoughts hostage.
Slowly but surely, the flood of information subsided, and I was left with topics I was truly passionate about. Deep down, I had been interested in many of these subjects but never fully embraced them because they weren’t popular within my bubble. Although somewhere within me I’ve always been drawn to politics and international relations, a career as a diplomat or politician has never truly been an option for me. It would draw me too far from the radius of everyone I love and the values that have shaped me.
It wasn’t until I arrived at BC and met dozens of kids with the same interests that I fully embraced this passion and declared an international studies minor. It didn’t take long for my delusions of a business analytics major to crumble. Who was I kidding, analytics? I hate math. Even within my bubble, I’d always known I hated math. It just took being exposed to new routes of success for me to follow them.
I know this claim borders on preposterous since Boston College is as close to a bubble as you can get. Most students whom I meet on the Quad tell me they live just twenty minutes north or south from here. In a sense, I traded one bubble for another, and I know this bubble, too, will eventually pop.
College isn’t just the place where you make new friends and believe in new ideas but where you get to know the parts of yourself that have been waiting to be understood.
After seven months at BC, I can safely say I know myself better than I ever have. In another seven months, I hope to look back and have uncovered more of my hidden pockets of interest.
Once this bubble pops, I hope to enter another—a new social circle, in another climate, walking down an unfamiliar road.. But I no longer see myself through distorted walls of swirling water.
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