I used to think that if I ever got pregnant, I would treat nine months with a fetus in my womb as a stint in homeschooling. I would play Johann Sebastian Bach and Mazzy Star and the Fugees and read aloud textbooks on ancient civilizations, novels by Khaled Hosseini and poems by Pablo Neruda. I would narrate my life stories while driving or making dinner, archetyping my friends and family members and describing the cultural landscape of every country I had ever visited and every person I had ever met. I would likely download Duolingo to instill basic phrases in Spanish and Hindi, and I would make it a point to try every pregnancy-safe food available to lay the foundation for their diverse palette. God forbid I birth a picky eater.
I do not know the boundary between where a love for learning is intrinsic or taught, but I do know that growing up in a joint household — full of my paternal grandparents, parents, aunt and uncle, and at its peak, one brother and three cousins — I was surrounded by people and interactions from which to learn. I had a kindergarten teacher who facilitated my love for reading by making the act a gumball competition; my repertoire by the end of the year included lots of Dr. Seuss and the most gumballs of anyone in the class. Because my mom pushed me to enroll in week-long summer programs ranging from cooking to 3D printing, I know that I learned the value in collecting experiences made fulfilling by their fleetingness.
I was a precocious kid (and a self-proclaimed teacher’s pet) who enjoyed the academic validation of enrichment tutors and the gifted and talented program. School shifted for me when I, hyperfixated on watching YouTube videos of cardiothoracic surgeries, went to a magnet high school whose mascot was a strand of DNA. There, with my lens of learning reduced to a STEM approach, I made it a point to seek opportunities in journalism and politics, studying Advanced Placement courses in subjects I felt disadvantaged for not having access to.
I know I sound annoying. It gets worse.
My first ever op-ed for The Emory Wheel explored my frustration with pre-professional culture. I felt paralyzed by the fact that so many people had it figured out, all the while I was just discovering the expanse of knowledge that an educational institution could offer. I felt paralyzed by the unconscious passage of time, and then I stumbled on an essay by Marina Keegan.
Ahead of her graduation from Yale University (Conn.) in 2012, she wrote, “There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out — that it is somehow too late,” and “I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. ”
After I stumbled on this piece, I found out Keegan had tragically died a few days after her graduation despite an upcoming job at The New Yorker and a life outlook that proved transformative to my own.
Reflecting now, Keegan’s concept of this feeling of “the opposite of loneliness” is how I feel about how I have learned at Emory University. I have returned to my mother’s involuntary lesson of finding value in learning from a web of elusive temporary experiences, and I have done so inadvertently.
Last spring, I rushed a sorority despite the institution of Greek life being a recurring subject of critique in my sociology papers. I now live in that sorority lodge, and it has become responsible for introducing me to some of the most insightful, ridiculous, joy-inspiring women I know. These women, along with a spontaneous trip to Copenhagen, Denmark, this summer, inspired a TedTalk I delivered for the SexTalks event this past fall. For 15 minutes, I spoke on feminist communes and radical empathy, overwhelmed with gratitude for my fellow speakers, my loved ones in attendance and the fact that a year ago, I had been an inspired freshman in the audience.
This past August, I spontaneously signed up to audition for a side character role for the independent student-led production “Up Your Ass.” I knew of the director, Olivia Gilbert (26C), who spoke articulately in a one-credit feminist praxis class my freshman fall semester. I knew it was a feminist production, and I had never been in a theater production before. When I received the casting list a few days later, my suitemate and I searched up Bongi Perez, the character I had been cast as, realizing with horror that I would be portraying the lead role.
The play was the brainchild of Valerie Solanas, the woman responsible for the death of Andy Warhol (he had retracted his promise to produce this work). Bongi was the personal incarnation of Solanas, a cat-calling, queer, man-hating prostitute. The cast was full of some of the most talented and knowledgeable people I have met here. We had finished our first off-script run through the day before opening night, and yet, we successfully put on the play three nights in a row, the first time in history it was performed as written. The experience was complete with me professing quips like, “When I get on my knees I get paid,” straight face, saunter and all.
This semester, I get to help teach a one-credit class on the gut microbiome, yet another hyperfixation of mine. I get to be a student guide for the Carlos Museum exhibit “Recasting Antiquity,” exploring the intention in depicting the female form when thinking of the phrase “art for art’s sake” on my tours. I get to take a fiction class and a one-credit health journalism course with incredibly-talented authors, and I get to compile this project.
And yet, reflecting on every side quest I have entertained this year, I cannot help but feel anxious. I am stepping back from an editing position at the Wheel, despite journalism being my longest side quest since middle school, because I want to deepen my exploration in the field of public health. Soon, I will be living off campus, and then I will be abroad. And then, it will be my final year of college, an unfathomable, nightmarish thought that spurs conniption, because I thrive so well by bursting a bunch of tiny bubbles in this one big bubble of Emory.
I have considered the value of short, temporary experiences, initially questioning their perceived value to future employers. And then, more recently, I have thought about obtaining a Ph.D. because if I do so well in a space where semester-long commitments exist, why ever leave academia?
My suitemate, Sahana Ashley (26C), and I frequent the laundry room on the fifth floor in my sorority lodge, usually after one of us has a breakdown or existential crisis, typically in the middle of the night. My voice memo app will be open and recording, for fear that Sahana will introduce me to an ideology or epiphany that will cataclysmically shift my worldview. We plot, as college-aged girls do, about all of our intentions and plans and goals. I remember Sahana telling me that she views her life as a tapestry of collected threads and weavings, just as I view the stories and experiences I lead as integral to a future, hypothetical memoir.
There is intentionality that comes with bursting any bubble, whether it is choosing to go on a first date or apply to an experience or take a class. Part of why I proposed this project was because personal narratives, regardless of their subject matter, automatically burst bubbles by demanding vulnerability. Sylvia Plath’s famous fig tree analogy, representative of the destabilizing fear we are faced with when thinking about the millions of paths and alternate realities we are unable to live in this lifetime, comes to mind when I think of the importance of being vulnerable enough to try. I blame pre-professionalism and my tendency to overthink when considering my freshman year paralysis. I may not make any of these experiences into long-term careers, but there is arguably more beauty and fulfillment in having had the chance to say I had a side quest and did it justice.
Sometimes I feel myself tokenizing my college side quests, sharing them in conversation because I am aware of the eclectic diversity of experiences I have collected. But I need to remind myself that they represent an eclectic diversity of my interests, and beyond so, the perspective I hope to always retain by placing the utmost importance on varied experiential learning. And my dad, a practical, self-proclaimed “business guy,” aware of his daughter’s often pretentious love for learning, has recently taught me that there is equal power in experiences that are stable and familiar. Saying no to an opportunity in trade for downtime, staying at home for three weeks instead of studying abroad and trying out a nine to five in lieu of a more exhausting career are all valuable; with so many bubbles to burst, a girl has got to have time to rest and reflect.
And so I come back to this idea that my future, hypothetical fetus will develop through my investment in varied forms of knowledge, because surely, these experiences are defined by my intent to chase them. That’s all I can hope to do in my lifetime, perhaps in hopes that by constantly challenging my bubble, I can understand how every person loves and learns and loses in this strange collective bubble that we call life.
Saanvi Nayar (26C) is from Marlboro, N.J.
