By any measure, my freshman year at Binghamton University was far from perfect.
I was depressed more often than I was contented. I took more time to ponder attending another university than I did to plan which parties to attend on a given weekend. My fluctuations in mood weren’t as much from good to bad, as they were bad to worse.
That being said, I cannot think of a better place for me than Binghamton University. Allow me to explain.
My best friend Seth and I both attended private, largely homogeneous high schools. Both are considered elite institutions in their respective cities, and are havens of the upper-middle to upper classes. These were schools where underachievers such as myself and Seth were tirelessly pushed and prodded toward the success that our teachers so avidly hoped for us.
Seth actively sought the perfect school for himself (an artistically gifted tech-genius). He found Hampshire College, a tiny, hugely expensive private school. This is a place with no grades and no curriculum, where students can study whatever they desire.
My college search and application process went differently. I had absolutely no desire to go to college, especially my first year out of high school. My mother dictated the operation, and Binghamton University was just another blip on my list of schools of which I knew nothing. However, after a pleasant tour on a misleadingly sunny day, I found myself caught in the fast-moving stream toward the University. Letters of intent were signed, deposits mailed and orientation attended, and, on one sunny day in August, I settled down in Vestal, with few expectations and the resigned feeling that I had nothing to lose.
Binghamton is the perfect counterpart to my high school experience. A huge public school with a population that includes huge numbers of foreign students, extreme variation in both ethnicity and faith and, of course, sex, BU’s genetic makeup alone was enough to shock this suburban white boy’s system.
In high school, I was lucky enough to know everyone. I had personal relationships with most teachers and administrators, and a sphere of influence that I exercised frequently. At Binghamton, anonymity is the way of life. In class, the student next to you may barely understand English, and your teacher almost assuredly has no interest in knowing your name, let alone who you are.
However, many of the friends I made were, for the first time in my life, over-achievers. I was encouraged to work, not by adults, but extraordinarily (at least in my case) by the example of my peers.
Although Seth and I were both miserable for long stretches of the year, our misery was rooted in entirely different causes. A place like Hampshire attempts to be the perfect school, and because, as Seth would come to realize, it wasn’t, it can be a very sad place. Binghamton does not reach for perfection, but is and forever will be just a school.
That’s it.
My angst, I’ve come to realize, was not directed at Binghamton’s failings, but at the idea of school itself. I was not miserable because of how different college was from the comfort of high school, but because despite their glaring differences, college is still just school.
It is because of these differences that I have come to embrace Binghamton. For me it was a much needed shot of reality that although delivered both immediately and intravenously, took almost a year to filter through to this stubborn brain of mine. Binghamton is a tiny little microcosm of the world, with everything from Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts to All-American wrestlers, from Sikhs to Presbyterians, from the international students to the Vestal natives. But above all, Binghamton is a school.
And although it has taken me a year to come to terms with it, it’s a pretty good school at that.