When I was a kid—let’s go with circa third grade—I had a big thing for Lewis and Clark (the explorers, not our neighbors from across the river). Or at least my eight-year-old perception of Lewis and Clark. I’d spent my childhood hearing about explorers in the abstract, and then here were Lewis and Clark, bona fide adventurers. Canteens, compasses, inaccurate maps, the whole shebang.
I always daydreamed about adventure. Part of that can be attributed to the ridiculous number of fantasy books I read, but most of my desire stemmed from my perpetual state of agonizing boredom. Boredom that drove me to hack at my hair when I was six. To attempt to start a detective agency when I was nine. To spend my eighth grade technology class building a highly successful rocket from a paper towel tube and a plastic folder.
It’s what brought me to Reed.
I saw college as one big adventure, four years of sweet relief from the dull ache of monotony in my head. I was nervous—a perfectly common emotion in explorers—excited and anxious to expand the boundaries of my own known world.
I had confidence in that world. I knew Latin and poetry, literature and culture, music and comedy and tea making. I had fought my own mind and I had won, I claimed my prize of prospection and appreciation with hands caked in the mud of the walls of my own hole. I was independent. I was responsible. I was smart, I was cultured, I was strong. I knew so much.
I know nothing.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in the first quarter of my collegiate career, it’s that I know nothing. I know nothing of poetry, of T.S. Eliot or memorized verses or the platonic side of Neruda. I’ve always thought of myself as well-read but there are so many books I’m told I have to read, so many authors who are said to change my life… I haven’t read a tenth of what it takes to be culturally literate here. I know nothing of music. My feet dance sometimes to songs I’ve never heard before, stepping in time in a way I’ve never seen. I look into some people’s eyes here and they hold visions of worlds I have never seen. My known world is expanding, pushing past its boundaries and I can’t see a horizon. I feel overwhelmed. Lost. Inadequate.
I know nothing, and I am glad for it. I am overwhelmed but exhilarated. There’s the fear of the unknown and the desire to explore it. If I have learned anything from Reed, from my own know world, it is that the great thrill of life and the most rewarding times in life happen when you’re going in blind. When you can feel the apprehension and the cautious buzz from the shaky ground under your feet. As you teeter on the edge you can see the edges of the known world. Of what you’ve yet to discover. There’s a sense of impossibility with boredom. And the Lewis and the Clark inside of me get excited. I grab my canteen and my books, and I set out, delightfully clueless to what I’m doing.
[If you’re a freshman and have experiences you would like to share in the Quest, shoot us an email: quest@reed.edu—Ed]