Embrace contradiction: Owning unique experiences in the face of their commonality

“One of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.” - Joan Didion

The Duke University Marine Lab is a special place. Certain aspects of its exceptionality are more obvious — who wouldn’t marvel at a college campus located on its own island or classes held on a boat? But, since coming back to main campus, I’ve struggled to fully capture what my semester at the lab felt like then or means to me now, whenever the inevitable question arises. 

Part of this struggle is surely due to the immensity of the experience. I spent 18 weeks living on the coast with 10 other Duke undergraduates; we spent our days watching dolphins from classroom windows, running experiments in the lab and competing in many impromptu knock-out tournaments, most commonly in flip-flops or sandals. We jumped off the swim dock and watched sunsets, and we held parties featuring the broken karaoke machine, which functioned as our ground-dwelling disco ball. 

For an entire semester, we were, practically, within arm’s reach of each other, sharing in our triumphs and tribulations. So, it’s hard to sum up the ups and downs, all the little memories and laughter, in a few sentences in a passing conversation. It seems to betray the experience, to belittle it, to cast it aside in such a way. 

But there’s more to the struggle than a worry of lacking detail or falsely representing the experience. I know how I feel about my time at the marine lab. I have clear impressions of its joy and contentment. Why then do I find myself hemming and hawing when asked about my semester away?

Part of this hesitation, surely, comes down to the silent, humbling pressure that whispers, “You’re not that special.” With over 3,000 Duke students having studied abroad in some capacity just in 2024, my self-awareness catches in my throat and makes me hesitate to share, fully, what the semester meant to me. My experience is my own, but it’s also one in a million of other, similar experiences. Afraid of facing the eye roll and falling into the category of being one of those people claiming “transformation” from their semester abroad, I often choose to downplay the experience. I’ll say that it was good, perhaps share an anecdote or two, but not fully expose its profundity and power.

And here is where my good friend, writer Joan Didion, enters the scene. In her essay “Goodbye to All That,” Didion shares her musings on endings and beginnings, particularly during the sensitivity of one’s early twenties. She acknowledges the dissonance one can weather with experiences that we believe are original, but remain fairly common. But she pushes on the idea that this knowledge isn’t, and perhaps shouldn’t, be enough to prevent such convictions from growing. She gives us room to be hypocritical in this way; to act a certain way, believe certain things, to commit to them fully and openly, while still being aware of the possibility, and probability, of them not being as unique as we may think.

Despite knowing that there are other people doing it better, doing it earlier, doing it in a different way that is beating my same way, I can’t help but feel that my marine lab experience was truly my own: uniquely and authentically me. The troubles I navigated, the relationships I built, the appreciation for the fiery sky on every evening walk, it has to be all mine. And why can’t it? Why shouldn’t it? There isn’t harm in embracing my own narrative for a bit, because if I don’t, who will?