You know what it is to hope for a thing that seems quite within reach for a lot of people, but maybe not for you?
Many years ago I clung to a deep, abiding hope so hard I left claw marks.
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to do things differently than the way my family had done them. Most of my people did not go to college; they got pregnant and married instead and then struggled financially, emotionally, and mentally.
I was embroiled in the struggles, but where I had some degree of control was over whether or not I went to college. And, my god, how I wanted to go to college. I was (almost) entirely on my own, though, to figure out how to do that. I was a good student who worked hard (though I certainly could have worked harder). In high school I served as an officer of this club and that, was editor of the school newspaper, played soccer (poorly) . . . you get it. A couple of my teachers who had taken an interest in me were huge Virginia Tech fans. I have always loved the mountains (my grandmother drove us through the mountains from Virginia to Kentucky every summer to see her family).
This was long before the Internet, so I wrote a letter to the admissions office and requested an information packet. I cannot tell you my delight when it arrived. I poured over every piece of paper and THE MAP! My goodness, the map! I think we’ve established that I’m a huge nerd — I have always loved maps. You wouldn’t believe the hours I spent studying the map of that campus during my 11th and 12th grade years. I knew the name of every academic building and every dorm, I knew where the library was and the bookstore, and the Drillfield, featured prominently in the center of campus, with the chapel at one end and the duck pond near the other.
I could not wait to go to Virginia Tech. It became my singular goal and was the perfect distraction from the chaos in the rest of my life at the time. I memorized the scores and grades I needed to get in. I worked harder and harder in school and because of that, had no trouble getting great recommendation letters from my teachers. I had no idea at the time how stupid it was to have ONLY applied there. I did not apply anywhere else because I didn’t want to go anywhere else. Goodness.
I don’t know that I’d ever been happier up to that point than on the day the acceptance letter arrived. I was SO PROUD of myself, so proud that I’d done what others in my family had not managed to do. It was an outsized dream come true. I was going to college.
My parents divorced just before my senior year in high school. My mother had been a stay-at-home mom my entire life, so I easily qualified for financial aid based on her meager income as a department store clerk, where she worked as she began to rebuild her life. But I had always been assured that any money due beyond what financial aid paid for would be covered.
My excitement was too much to contain. I was going to Virginia Tech, that school in the mountains I’d never visited but knew by heart.
Three weeks before I was supposed to leave for freshman orientation, with my Twin XL sheets and shower caddy packed, my supplemental financing was pulled out from under me. I didn’t owe much for the first semester because of scholarships and financial aid, but I owed more money than I had.
I’d been so, so close.
I was absolutely sick with grief. I felt like I’d been hit in the chest with a shot put. I threw up. I curled myself into a ball and I cried.
But then, I got myself together. I made it my mission to figure it out and got busy. Eventually, I rounded up the money I needed to get there — at least for the first semester, just in time — and I’d never been so happy to get the hell out of my hometown as I was then.
The only way I can describe what it was like arriving on campus that first time is this: imagine you’re watching an animated film and suddenly, bit by bit, the animation fades away and everything comes to life. It was like the map came to life before my eyes. I drove around the Drillfield and could name every building. I was awestruck seeing them in person. I was even happier than I’d been the day I got the acceptance letter — the joy that wells up from something hard-won and nearly lost.
I managed to get through the first year and then worked both a full-time and a part-time job that summer and took on work-study jobs during the rest of the year. With loans, I was able to manage it, though it was incredibly stressful, never knowing from year to year if I’d be able to find the funds to return to this place I loved so much. But I did. I got through. I graduated. I made it.
I loved every bit of my time there. That sounds like hyperbole, but I really did. Throughout those four years, often when I came upon the library (where I spent a lot of time as an English major), I’d stop and look up. And something about the scene of it — the stone against the sky, the trees, the map come to life — I’d be awestruck again. And so, so grateful. Every single time, I’d think, “I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I made it.”
My heart breaks a little now for that desperately hopeful girl with a worn-out map of a place she’d never been but was determined to go. She lacked so many tools and so much knowledge about how to navigate all of that, but damn if she didn’t figure it out. It was often messy, and certainly exhausting and frustrating, and hard as hell. But she did it.
31 years (count ‘em) after I graduated, I was in Blacksburg again last week. The campus is so different — there has been tons of development, there are many more dorms and academic buildings, and even parking decks now. My dorm is still there (I bet they’ve gotten air conditioning), but the old townhouses I lived in my last two years have been torn down and replaced with admittedly more attractive high-rise apartments.
I went for a walk around a pond I had loved in Jefferson National Forest, just minutes out of town. It was different, too. Better now, with widened paths of crushed stone instead of the narrow dirt trails of thirty years ago. There were new benches and picnic tables, but the pond itself and the whole area were full of familiarity. It “felt” like the place I remember.
I had breakfast at an old favorite restaurant that was blessedly still the same. I felt like my 20-year-old self there, just with less stress when it was time to pay the bill. I wandered the campus bookstore where the building hasn’t changed but there are far fewer textbooks than there used to be in my pre-internet days. The space is mostly full of clothing and electronics charging equipment now.
As I walked around campus I stopped and looked up at the library again.
I was instantly that 18-year-old girl. I’ve always had a strong sense of place and my feet planted on the ground in front of that building took me right back. So I stood there for a long while, remembering, and took this photo. I may have even cried a little.
Sometimes I still can’t believe I made it. But I am so glad I did. Young me was far more badass than she realized, even if she was kind of a mess. Thirty-one years later, the mess has remained, but I learned early on that I am capable of figuring things out, of finding a way, even if it’s not perfect.
Everyone has their hard stuff and this was just a piece of mine, but each piece, each difficulty and struggle, made me better equipped to handle the next one, which is, of course, the stuff of life.
Thank you VT, thank you Blacksburg, thank you Jefferson National Forest, and thank you young me — for not giving up.
xo,
Beth
I love this so much. The struggle was worth it!