“…from 13 original colonies…” Part I

As a kid anywhere in the United States, at some point you’re going to hear (and possibly memorize) one of the various songs from pop culture that names all of the states in our “nifty” union of 50. I would venture to say, however, that most of us never have the chance, or indeed are not even interested in visiting most of those places we sing about…they just seem so far away from our own experience that they might as well be in a foreign country. I once was asked, along with the rest of Dr. Davis’ Intro to Sociology class at Harvard on the Highway (aka Dalton State College or simply “the Jr. College,” if you didn’t know…) to draw a map of the United States from memory with a time-limit of about 3 minutes. The results of this seemingly easy task were stunning across the board in that all of our quick sketches reflected that we somehow believed that the Deep South took up about ¾ of the country and the rest was made up of only California, Washington State & Maine. In most cases, Texas, if it appeared at all, was about ¼ the size of Georgia & you could forget about finding the Midwest at all, much less the smaller (read: insignificant) states of New England, such as Connecticut, Rhode Island or Vermont. After all, for most of the people in that class, our travels up to that point had only consisted in camping or road trips from Georgia to Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina or summer trips to the beach (always in Florida, Georgia or South Carolina), so our sense of placement of the rest of the states in the U.S. was slim to none. Only in the last several years, after having graduated from college, working a “real” job and then giving up said job to go back to grad-school, have I begun to break out of the cocoon that was my limited experience and book-knowledge-only of the rest of the country outside our beloved South.

And so it is that I begin a year of writing about my experiences living in New England; on one hand as a way of keeping my friends and family up to date with what I’m up to here and on the other, as a way of sorting through the personal impressions I have of this different culture and reflecting upon the changes that occur in myself as a result of living in a new place. Already, as I was making my way up here with my “vintage” Jeep Cherokee, a U-Haul trailer & an old friend who agreed to help me out in return for a free road trip up the Eastern Seaboard (Thanks J.D!), the very central purpose of why I was moving began to be questioned & evaluated, leading to yet another change of direction in my life. It all began about 2 years ago, when as my Master’s degree in Romance Languages was drawing to a close. I began to wonder if I had given up too soon (at 19 years old, after barely 1 year of college) the dream I had of becoming a medical doctor, which sprang from a trip I had taken at 16 years old with a medical mission team to a Hurricane-Mitch-ravaged Honduras. So, setting out to prove to myself that it could be done and to make sure I didn’t wake up at 50 years old and always regret never having given it a try, I embarked on a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program (sounds frightening, I know!), in which I would take all of the necessary sciences (which had always terrified me) required to enter med school. The idea was that I would study one year at the University of Georgia, taking General Chemistry and Physics while teaching Spanish full-time to pay the bills. Then, I would complete the Health Careers Program the following year (that would be this year) at Harvard Extension School, in order to obtain their sponsorship on my medical school application. All of this had been going surprisingly smoothly since the sciences do not come easy for me, but throughout the past year, never a day went by that I did not question my goal of becoming a doctor, wondering if I were making the right choice.

Coming soon...The trip through the original colonies with my buddy, J.D., stopping at Aunt & Uncle’s farm in VA, touring Boston on bicycle, 1st time at Fenway Park, meeting the new roommates, dropping out of school before it even started, etc.