City on a Hill: Admission of an Older Student

“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.”

Matthew 5:14

“[this is] for refusing to believe in miracles

because miracles are the impossible coming true

and everything is possible

this is for the possibility that guides us

and for the possibilities still waiting to sing

and spread their wings inside us”

Andrea Gibson, “Say Yes”

“Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like the arctic tundra or sea ice.”

-Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

We walked through a narrowly shoveled, salt-encrusted, cobblestone path in the freezing cold up to the chapel at the top of Academy street. I remembered my American Literature teacher lecturing about the significance of being a city on a hill, the shining example for others. Life has given me a heavy-handed metaphor just now: this hill overlooks downtown Kalamazoo from a privileged vantage point. I saw the view from the decrepit steps of WMU’s all-but-abandoned East Hall before they demolished it. That felt like a dream that would not come to fruition, a failed ideal. Yet, this campus on a hill remains vibrant. I wondered if my professor, an alumna of this school, pictured this hill as she spoke to us about American utopias. For the past two years Kalamazoo College stood as my personal and literal city on a hill. I watched the peaks of buildings appear and then shrink in the bus window every day on my way to community college and I thought, one day I’ll turn there and go up the hill instead of past it. Now, finally standing on campus, I had two equally compelling thoughts: God, I'm not sure if belong here but please, please let me stay.

I felt old, this is partially because the cold seeped into my healed radial head fracture in my elbow. Riding home from work this past summer I turned to swat at a fog of gnats, this motion combined with the near-darkness of the Bicentennial Trail caused me to lose balance and go flying from my bicycle. In another stupid motion I moved my left arm out to stop my free fall to earth. The impact rippled up my forearm until something absorbed the shock. That something was my elbow cracking. The bone healed but left me with a slight bend in my arm and ability to feel storms and cold fronts brewing ominously in the aether before others can see them, like a weathered sailor. This added sensory level is strange and unnerving, an unasked for second sight that comes with life experience. But, partially I felt old because the woman in admissions said we could try to graduate in two years but, it would most likely take us three. I would be a thirty-year-old college graduate.

My small stature and soprano speaking voice afford me quite a bit of passing privilege in college. I never know if I should out myself as an older student or not. Usually, it takes an exasperated admission from another student, “I feel so much older than everyone else!” for me to say anything. Education is supposed to be a journey but, it is a bit more challenging to make it up the hills as one ages.

We are three older community college students, although I am by far the oldest. The man to my left has attended four different schools looking for the right fit. He’s worn a suit to his admissions interview. The girl to my right is a friend of mine with an equally poor high school record. She writes vividly about sin and redemption in our creative writing class and I am glad we are not competing for the same spot in the English program, she’s applying the most truthfully of all of us, as an Undecided.

            Last week, I stopped by my independent study professor’s office to discuss some research difficulties I’d been having with my paper. This initial conversation lasted a good minute before it changed course and drifted to our favorite episode of The X-files (the one about the killer-writer) , Rebecca Solnit’s upcoming visit (I still don’t know if I can get out of class to go), and then meandered its way to his wall of degrees. On the right wall of his office, framed, are his academic accomplishments, like stars in a constellation that leads to this spot in this office at this school at this very moment in time. He told stories of eleventh hour funding, terrible jobs, and alternating attending school with his then-girlfriend, now wife: It’s a good story. All my professors have good stories and none of them begin with certainty. It’s a journey. We turn to leave and stop by the poster for Rebecca Solnit’s visit.

            “You really need to see her later this month.” He reminded me. Again. 

            “I’ll try but, I have class during her reading.” I said.

            “You have class at 2pm on Tuesday?” He looked at his watch.

            “Yeah.” I said.

            “The class you just missed twenty minutes of? Must not be important.”

            “...Shit.” I turned to leave.

After a greatly shortened Biology class, I headed home through the existential crisis Michigan is having. The maintenance man is out clearing sidewalks at my apartment complex again; Sisyphus with a snow blower. At least the weather fit my mood. I am in the longest winter of my college career. The work is done; the applications sent; all that remains is to wait by the mailbox and hope.  I’m trying my best not to hope for a miracle because, a miracle means certain experiences are otherwise outside of my realm of possibility, that some doors remain shut if your high school career was not exemplary, if you had to wait to go to college.  A miracle implies I haven’t put in hours of work. I don’t need a miracle, I just need a break.