Muffin in the Sky

This is the legend of Muffin.

It's not a long story, but it is a strange one.

The week my roommates and I moved into 1217, the week before classes started last semester, we received a gift from a girls' apartment in an adjacent building. It was a plate of six banana muffins, one for each of us. Five of us ate one, but Carson did not. We don't know why he didn't eat it; he claims to this day it didn't occur to him that it was his, but we aren't here to speculate. The point is, the muffin sat uneaten on the counter for two weeks.

When we checked on it to see if it had gone bad, we discovered the muffin had become extremely hard, like a cinder block. We showed it to Carson to see what he had done (jokingly, of course), and in so doing we saw fit to smack him with the muffin. When we did, I swear the thing made a resonating sound like a bell. and it bounced down to the table unharmed.

After observing its peculiar stability, the rest of us saw fit to do something more fun with the muffin. Three of us, along with a friend from another dorm, suspended the muffin from a small hook on the ceiling in the center of the living room, directly above a tipped-over chair and a note reading "Carson, you left me alone for two weeks. Why couldn't you let me die?"

Muffin's current state

We had a good laugh over that, and we thought that might be the end of the story, but there was more to come. We put the chair back at the table and disposed of the note, but the muffin stayed there, hanging from its scotch tape noose. After a couple more weeks, that wasn't good enough for us anymore, so I updated the suspension to a single sewing thread, which is nearly invisible in certain lighting and allows the muffin to turn lazily with the air currents.

Since it is now April, Muffin has been hanging there for eight months. Yes, eight months. He is still as hard as stone and shows no signs of decay, so we've endeavored to leave him there, declaring him our seventh roommate. I'm not sure if that's a greater testament to Muffin's wondrous qualities or our own unsurpassed weirdness, so I'll let you judge. In the meantime, we've been discussing strategies to preserve Muffin's legacy, appointing me to keep him safe and perhaps someday cast him in an acrylic block to keep for posterity. I suppose, in the end, diamonds are not forever. Muffins are forever.

Hic Manebimus Optime!

One Year Later

It's somewhat of a special time right now, because this month marks one year from my initial rejection from Harvard. March 31st 2016, I realized my dream was not coming true, and I started this blog. Back then its purpose was mostly to vent, not to entertain you folks. My, how things change.

A year can seem like an incredibly long time looking forward, but not long at all looking back. A year ago today (the 14th, that is--the day I finally got around to finishing this post) I wrote about my problems securing the housing contract I wanted, and right now I'm gearing up for final cleaning checks in that same dorm. Back then, all I knew about the people I'd spend the year with was that my direct roommate wanted me to transfer to another building to make room for his friend. Seriously, that was our first interaction. Not what I'd call getting off on the right foot, but such is life. I didn't know back then that these strangers would become some of my best friends or, even more surprisingly, that I would become one of theirs. All I knew was that I wasn't where I wanted to be, and the thought never crossed my mind that perhaps I was where I should be.

No, I'm not talking about where I deserved to be; that's an issue lost to time. I'm talking about the place that would help me grow as a human being. This isn't to say that I wouldn't have experienced similar growth at Harvard, because in fact I'm certain I would. I just wasn't prepared to handle the idea that multiple options could afford me the same opportunities. My heart was set, my target was in my sights, and I missed, and that was all I could think about.

Twelve months later, I can at least say that I can more fully appreciate the mundane. Despite the aftermath of a less-than-stellar midterm and the impending doom that is finals, I noticed today for the first time that the air itself smells sweet now, from everything in bloom. The sun is also out for the first time in months, which is equally refreshing.

Looks nice, doesn't it?

So have I changed in the past year? I don't think that's for me to say, really, since I doubt I'm an objective measure of my own progress, but perhaps I have, at least a little. I've loosened up a bit, learned to roll with disappointment a hair better and make time for fun things, but I'm still me. And for whatever reason, I feel that's important to say. While the college experience shapes who you become, I think that feeling more or less the same as I did a year ago means I've been able to make choices consistent with the version of myself I'd like to be. I don't notice the changes in my character because I had to take the incremental steps to get to where I am, changing a tiny bit with each step.

Since I know what was happening to me a year ago, I also know what just happened to 28,000 more people. The world just got a fresh batch of Rejects, and they'll have some important decisions up ahead. While no single case is identical to mine, I can at least act as proof that things work out fine in the end. Welcome to the club, my friends!

Hic Manebimus Optime!