OPINION | CAMPUS VOICES
Sorry first-years, but Duke is not your home
By Felicia Chen | August 28, 2019It takes time to grow into a life at Duke.
It takes time to grow into a life at Duke.
Because it is so easy to alienate others by being overly self-righteous, confrontation can come off as obnoxious and detract from the cause. The goal should be to persuade and enlighten, not assert moral superiority.
If you had asked me one week ago if I was excited about coming back to Duke, I would have told you I still didn’t plan on coming back—I was clinging to fantasies of job acceptances like they were winning lottery tickets.
Duke, you need to do more.
The memory of my concentration feat now makes me curious about attention spans—how potent mine was as a child, how it’s since frayed, and how I can work on building it back up.
As you’re going through it, each moment feels all-consumingly important, unbearably significant. Some of those moments actually are. But in hindsight, at least to me, they all add up to a beautiful blur of lessons.