The best place in Atlanta is on the intersection of DeKalb Avenue and Delta Place, where you can watch the cars, the MARTA and the freight train whiz by, all at once. You feel like you’re in the middle of the entire world there, even though Atlanta is a collection of fragmented neighborhoods separated by 162-lane mega highways. There, you can look at the trains and feel so completely insignificant and yet so connected to the wider world — just a train stop along a long route of other unremarkable stops.
College felt like that to a certain extent. Each semester sped by and left me forever changed by its series of events, no matter how big or small. There was the time I sobbed on the floor of the Eagle Hall gender neutral bathroom freshman year, the dramatic breakup on the Beltline sophomore year and the freezing cold walk across the Emory University Quadrangle in December of my junior year, when I realized I had to say goodbye to Emory for a whole semester abroad. And then there is senior year, which has been defined by travels across the South, gator bites at The Po’boy Shop & Basement Bar and days spent delighting in the magical mayhem of Little Five Points. These moments defined my college experience. They sped by like a freight train alongside DeKalb, its wind pushing me back and displacing me, leaving me irrevocably changed.
During spring break of this year, I sat on the lawn of a friend’s house in Boone, N.C., looking over the Blue Ridge Mountains and feeling the sun burn my skin. The mountains looked like they were breathing, the wind lulling the trees and the peaks and valleys glowing blue through haze and clouds. Beside me, friends lay on their backs, eyes fixed on the clouds as they moved across the sky like individual sheets of wispy cotton balls, pointing up and laughing as they assigned shapes to the amorphous blobs. “I see a lady!” “There’s a unicorn!” I was hit with a feeling that I have only really felt when I am beside my family in front of the glowing Christmastime fire, relishing in the warmth of the living room in the depths of the freezing New York winter: I am surrounded by love.
That’s because college is meant for finding family more than it is meant to imbue you with random knowledge obtained from a series of imperfect classes that cost a cumulative $31,700 a semester. It is for bringing you people who want to eat fried pickles on a Tuesday night and dance to “The Twist” (1958) at Blind Willie’s on a Wednesday — not because you do n0t have anything better to do, but because you love each other. It’s for people who recognize that college is a magical snippet of time — a stop along the freight train — that should be spent bringing silliness to the most mundane weekdays. I’m leaving college not with a job that will pay me $100,000, but with the knowledge that I have found the purest, kindest love in the past four years in Atlanta. And that’s more than enough.
“I am in bed and my life is in boxes and I am faced with the terrifying reality that my life may never be as good as it is right now,” I wrote in my journal at the end of my first year at Emory, sitting on a naked blue mattress in my Eagle Hall dorm room that was littered with poorly packed Storage Squad cardboard containers. It’s laughable to think that I ever felt that freshman year was the peak of happiness, when it was both completely miserable at times and incomparable to the bliss the three succeeding years brought me. But finding the good in everything is who I am; a girl who cries on the airplane when I’m leaving home for Emory, and then again on the airplane when I’m returning home from Emory. There are worse things in the world than to be somebody who falls in love with every place she inhabits. I’m unbelievably lucky that Atlanta, and the people within it, have filled my cup.
As I leave college and look at my entire, unscheduled life lying out in front of me, I’ll try not to panic at the uncertainty or agonize over the goodbyes. I’ll say thanks that the winding freight train deposited me at Emory four years ago. And on May 12, when I cross the graduation stage, I’ll hear that mournful train whistle that signals that the end is here, and I’ll be scared — don’t get me wrong. But I’ll hop on board and chug on to the rest of life.
Sophia Peyser (25C) is from New York City and majored in English and creative writing and environmental science at Emory. In college, she served as editor-in-chief of The Emory Wheel, worked as a DJ at WMRE student radio and interned at the environmental nonprofit Science for Georgia. After graduation, she will be working at CNN as a news associate.
Sophia Peyser (she/her) (25C) is from New York City, majoring in creative writing and environmental science. Outside of the Wheel, Peyser has worked as a content writer and freelance journalist. You can find her reading Sally Rooney novels or working shifts at a Brooklyn bakery.
