New beats: A 2014 first impression

For the emotionally inarticulate, music is a lifeline. It's a way to say what you mean and mean what you say without ever uttering a word. I was looking for a phrase to describe my first few weeks here at Wellesley, searching for a song, when it all of a sudden hit me, hard, waiting in line for lunch at the Lulu.

‘I used to rule the world.'

That's how it feels as a first year. We're first-years again, women of Wellesley. Our days as high school seniors have vanished into the happy, juvenile past and we are the new purple kids on this lovely wooded block, finally reaping the reward of a year's worth of SAT's, AP's, A's and B's, and at last an acceptance letter. But that letter was just the beginning.

When asked what I most anticipated about college, I answered that I was looking forward to being a freshman again. Of course, I got the requisite puzzled looks and ‘ah . . . right,' smiles, but still I stuck to my guns. What I think I meant to say is that after three years of being expected to know the rules and fall in line and have the answers, etc, I was looking forward to a nine-month reprieve, a year in which I was completely free, even expected, to make mistakes. To ask stupid questions. To get lost. To think frat parties are cool.

Now, this is the Features section of your venerable newspaper. This isn't self expansion, or philosophy, or even rant central . . . but if you believe in the power of music, then try to think back. Think back to your first year, to your first moment, when you realized that this was all going to be a little bit harder than you'd fantasized. Maybe, for you pre-med folks, it was the moment after you received your first graded biology exams, just after the shock wears off and you realize that yes, that single digit percentage represents your score and no, the professor won't be dropping it and no, there is no retake and that ripping at your soul is the sound of Harvard Medical storming noisily off into the distance, disgusted at your lack of what you thought was intelligence.

Maybe it was the second you walked in on your roommate stark naked, hard at work on her bubblegum shrine of Edward Cullen humming that one song you really hate in a pitch not suited for human ears and you realized, with the force of an epiphany, that this relationship was not going to work out.

Maybe it was that frat party that left your clothes smelling like beer and your feet hurting like hell. That time you got locked out and your roomie's cell phone was dead. That time the mail office closed at 4:28 p.m.

Regardless of when it was, or how it happened, it has happened to all of us and it's happening to us first years right now. That awkward pause when someone you swore you've never met before gives you a smile and a "hi" and a "how's your brother?" and the only thing you going through your head is "What's her name again?" That missing Onecard. That gross shower. The creeping feeling of not knowing, not really, where you belong.

‘I used to rule the world'.

So I was standing in line at the Lulu, wallowing in the melancholy beauty of that lone phrase when something else hit me, a person, and I was back to reality. I used to be a senior. I used to sit at that back table by the window. I used to blah, blah, blah and yada yada and no one cares because this is Wellesley and you're a first year now. Again.

"Drink up baby doll

Are you in or are you out?"

This isn't self expansion, or philosophy, or even rant central . . . if you believe in the power of music maybe you'll believe me when I say that my life (or at least my outlook on it) changed in that moment. Either we're in or we're out, purple class. Either we're current first years or ex-seniors.

"Leave your things behind

‘Cause it's all going off without you"

So maybe I used to rule to the world. But then, everybody wants to rule the world. The moral of this story is that being a freshman is not quite what I fantasized . . . not as freeing or fun or ‘Felicity'esque . . . but the potential is there. And it'll hit you when you least expect it.

"So, let go, let go

Jump in

Oh well, what you waiting for?

It's all right

‘Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

So, let go, let go

Just get in

Oh, it's so amazing here

It's all right

‘cause there's beauty in the breakdown"