Baby steps

Five years ago, I was sitting in my high school Spanish class as my teacher, one of my best, began his usual controversial monologue intended to get a rise out of students and spark a discussion. It was a good strategy for shy Spanish speakers, and on that day, the topic, as Dr. Sanchez put it, was when we expected to be born. He explained that, as teenagers, we were essentially either molds of our parents or sometimes rebels. In either case, they came to define us. He wanted to know when each of us would begin to process our own experiences, develop our own ideas and become our person. After getting some hemming and hawing from the students, he went around the room, one by one, and the answer was always “Universidad.”

Five years later, as my college career hurtles toward graduation, I think about Dr. Sanchez’s question and our class’ unanimous response. Have I been born? How was I supposed to know? Was my diploma my new birth certificate, even though that economics degree represented a fraction of what I had learned?

In many ways, yes. High school me lived a fairly sheltered life, so college came in roaring. The harsh realities of social determinants and social inequity, often swept under the rug in grade school and largely ignored by adolescent me, stared me square in the face. More personally, I had to confront attitudes and misgivings within myself and come through, learning and knowing better, at least until the next internal confrontation came along. In the process, I had to be vulnerable and grow to rely on others around me. For my introverted persona, this is my greatest accomplishment—building a family when I was physically apart from the one that had carried me through the first 18 years.

I took my time. Infancy, in keeping with this reborn metaphor, is a tricky thing. I came to Duke, made some friends, joined the first organization I heard of, hit some bumps, became a mentee, stuck around at said organization, made more friends, became better friends with my best friends, took the helm at said organization, hit bigger bumps, became a mentor. Finally, as a senior, I wrote an original research paper and tried to convince more people to join said organization while deepening the relationships that made college worthwhile all along.

Through this personal journey of ups-and-downs and mistakes and lessons, I’ve come to love and appreciate the convoluted layers and contradictions of this University. Not only as a place where we make headlines with a Nobel Prize winner one year and then a porn star the very next, but more personally, my professors and peers, from 2010 to 2014, who have opened my eyes and challenged me. Duke, to me, has a very positive but still very nascent identity, one that it is trying to forge, complications and all. This identity resonates with me and how I see myself.

All the while, the relationships and connections have defined my Duke experience. I certainly made my fair share of mistakes along the way (some may say more than my fair share). There are those who shared in my moments of triumph and happiness, and there are those who were with me in times of pain and crippling self-doubt. You know who you are. I see some of you every day, and some of you I’ve lost touch with over the years. No matter who you are, know that I am indebted to you for being a friend in my time of need.

My Duke family only builds on my first family. To paraphrase Robert Frost, home is where, no matter what, they have to let you in the door. I feel very grateful to know that applies to me when so many others can’t say the same. While college accelerated my growth and formation of my identity, the foundation that my first family helped build continues to inform me today.

So, to a large extent, I was born in college, Dr. Sanchez. I came into my own. Ultimately, Duke has taught me that there are few certainties for me in life. One is that life will be a perpetual learning curve. I may be born now, but I could be born again, and again, and another time for good measure. Along the way, there will be moments of beauty, moments of struggle and moments of sorrow, but they are better shared with a family that only keeps growing.

Yeshwanth Kandimalla is a Trinity senior. He is a recruitment chair and former editor-in-chief of The Chronicle. He would like to thank his family and anyone who made it through this rambling.