The sweet, humid smell of spring at Duke often reminds me of a day about four years ago, when I moved into Gilbert-Addoms Dormitory on East Campus. I remember it in flashes: Beautiful campus. Sweat dripping down my face. 105 degrees outside. 110 degrees inside. So much pastel clothing.
Of all the novelties that held my attention during those first few weeks here, my classmates’ accents and languages fascinated me the most. After coming from a relatively homogeneous hometown, I found it thrilling to walk down my hallway and hear voices from exotic and faraway places, like Zimbabwe and Pennsylvania. I felt like every person’s language provided an incredible window into their lives, their experiences and their worlds.
I began to see language as a powerful matrix on which to view our world. Language defines our species, but our understanding of its mechanics is limited because we aren’t provided any formal training in linguistics until college. And although many people find the topic of language in society interesting, the popular perception of linguists as dry, pedantic academics steeped in elaborate theory cripples their potential impact as descriptors of the world.
I wrote these columns on linguistics to attempt to understand Duke through the useful, but underrated, lens of language. This topic has been creatively productive for me in the past year, so as I’ve begun to wind down my tenure at Duke, I have been wondering how to describe the entirety of my time here through language.
My four years have been anything but consistent, but the amalgam of all my experiences has shaped who I am now. Perhaps my whole Duke experience is some sort of motley collection, kind of like terms in a dictionary—a Duke dictionary. In fact, what if we all have been writing our own Duke dictionaries? Maybe they’re complete with definitions, tables, charts... and, for some of us, maybe even PowerPoints.
As we define our Duke experience, and as we let our Duke experience define us, our dictionaries fill up—entry by entry, page by page.
Maybe we all write in our dictionaries daily as we experience new things here, whether we spend our nights in the lab, in the studio, in the library or in the cage at Shooters (or all of them). Each entry is a point in time, a memory that we all made together or alone. Even the most common terms transform into entries with new, deeply meaningful connotations, loaded with the memories that we made here.
For example, before Duke, “tenting” was just something I did outside while it was cold, wet and muddy. At Duke, tenting became something I did outside while it was cold, wet and muddy—with 11 other people. Before Duke, terms like “gardens” and “plaza” were unremarkable, but at Duke, I redefined them as the perfect places to shamelessly take a nap on a hot spring day.
Some dictionary entries, such as “engage” and “global,” are much longer than others.
At our first-year convocation, President Brodhead told us to get engaged. We do that: Every day, hospital volunteers engage with patients, young entrepreneurs with their big idea, and thesis students with their research. The DukeEngage program allows hundreds of us to define engagement by working with communities here and abroad. Some of us are even engaged to be married!
And because Duke is building new programs around the world, it’s sometimes easy to forget that we can define “global” right here, too. Cultural shows like Awaaz and festivals like Springternational remind me that Duke gives us opportunities every day—in Durham—to define ourselves as global citizens.
I also had to write down entries like sexism, racism, classism and homophobia, when I saw them. But despite how painfully long those descriptions were, I had the choice to counterbalance them with entries like community, friendship and commitment. I alone defined and redefined what each of my experiences meant to me—my agency defined my time here.
As I’m about to put the final entry in my collection—“graduation”—and as I’m about to begin my next adventure, I wonder how much I’ll look back to my Duke dictionary to define the experiences that I haven’t yet had. How often will I use the things I learned here, in the classroom and out of it, to define my world?
And how much will Duke look to us to define itself? Because the truth is, we do define Duke just as much as this University defines us. We are all entries in Duke’s own dictionary.
I am humbled to be in the company of students who passionately and habitually redefine Duke and our world. And I am not only proud of the collection of experiences that defined me as a student here, but I am so excited to be a part of a community that defined, and will continue to define, Duke.
Sandeep Prasanna is a Trinity senior and a Program II major examining the dynamics of language. This is his final column.
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