Who are you? Who am I? | Week 16

April | College Years and Friendship | Week 16 | 4/23/2023
Talk about senior year of college

Seneca famously said, "travel and change of pace impart new vigor to the mind." He is correct. Senior year of college really taught me that. The experiences I had and the friendships I made, became the activation energy necessary to propel me on a journey, unending to the very day of writing this week's essay - having returned from Japan 24 hours ago with the two roommates who will be much the subject of this essay. Senior year I gained three valuable things, [1] a career, [1] brotherhood, and [3] a true love of travel. When I returned from my monk-mode summer in Spartanburg, I moved into the new apartment with Zach and Daniel. This was to be our golden year, and we all had a similar feeling that something special was happening in that place, at that time. We were right.

Within weeks of moving in, I was tasked to report to New Zealand for a case competition. I'd been to Europe twice and Canada once, but I'd never flown the opposite direction on the globe. I can recall, hours before I had to get on a plane, sitting on my bedroom floor packing. Daniel walked in my room to sit with me. I had just flared up at the end of summer and I was in really rough shape. We chatted about what I should do. Should I cancel the trip? I was running out of options for medications, but there was always the crutch of prednisone to get me through the coming weeks. I appreciated his friendship in that moment, I'd often made these decisions alone, consulting my parents and then frantically meditating (oxymoron) on how to proceed, before I'd lost too much of myself to recover. And so the decision was made - get on 60mg of prednisone and go to New Zealand. My parents were less than pleased but I'm glad I went. In New Zealand, we had the time of our lives. We got 3rd place in the case competition, a stellar result for the University of Florida. And it gave me the itch to go international again, as soon as possible. 

Seneca was a wise man. He also said, "You will find you are most alive when you are in movement, not in rest." Senior year really embodied this message. As soon as I returned from New Zealand, I accepted my offer with Amazon to begin effective June 2018, after graduation. I'd now secured the job. But I wasn't about to slow down. I started working a second job at the school, I started taking Masters of International Business classes alongside my senior year curriculum, and I began trying out for the Australia case competition scheduled in November. I remember those days vividly. Life was a crazy train. I would go to school from 8 am to 2 pm, work my first job from 2 pm to 4 pm, hitch a ride home from campus with Daniel, lift weights from 4 to 5 pm, work my second job from 5 pm to 7 pm, come back home, feast with the boys, and then stay up late into the night watching obscure television shows, talking about exes, analyzing music and imbibing in various substances with Zach and Daniel. It was busy, but it was vitalizing. Every day brought something new, and despite the fatigue, bleeding and arthritic pain, I loved the movement, as Seneca put it. 

I ended up winning a spot on the Australia team and began making preparations to leave. To no surprise, I was excited but very ill. I was on Methotrexate and Entyvio. The former is a nasty chemotherapy injection once a week and the ladder is a powerful immunosuppressant injection every 4 weeks. Daniel would routinely and timely appear from his room on Friday afternoons to help me with my Methotrexate injection. It was by far the roughest medication I've ever been on and almost immediately after each injection I'd feel cold and sick. His presence and assistance got me through many tough Fridays. My gratitude and love for him grew rapidly in that time, a friend I'd known no more than a year helping me out of kindness, not expectation. It felt reminiscent - similar to my gratitude and love for Zach, whom a year earlier had helped me through the toughest breakup of my lifetime (even now), with his presence and friendship, and with no expectation of returned favor. 

Australia didn't go as planned. I lied to my professors and my teammates about how ill I was and within hours of arriving I had a nasty sinus infection due to the immunocompromization. I hid it in order to continue with the competition, but 48 hours later I checked myself into a hospital in Sydney. I can remember the phone call to my Mom so clearly. Me: "Hey, I can't see out of my eyes and I'm going to pass out, I have some sort of infection." Mom: "You what?!" Me: "I'm going to call an Uber and check myself into a hospital." I spent 3 days in that hospital, in an overflow bed on the top floor, being pumped full of antibiotics and making phone calls back home to settle insurance issues. In fact, I spent Thanksgiving in that hospital bed, wondering what the hell I was doing on the other side of the world. Why had I journeyed here, why had I lied, why me again, in this position? I missed the first day of the competition in Melbourne but arrived in time for day 2, to dive right into a 12 hour case. That night I made some very serious amends to my teammates and my professor, coming clean about my whole story and my health situation. Thank God for women. They're wonderful, loving, compassionate creatures. The three women I was with sobbed at my story, hugging me and showing me altruistic affection, the kind a man needs in this life. To this day, I'll always consider them dear friends. 

As an aside, it's funny, I found out years later how much Daniel and Zach bonded during those two weeks I spent in New Zealand and Australia. I was the link for their friendship, having brought the three of us together separately. But I continue to hear, 5 years later, about the conversations they had during that time about art, music, women, and life. 

After a very fun winter break spent in Colorado with my Fleming Island crew, we all returned to college rejuvenated. Case competitions were over for me, I'd had a very successful 3-competition run, which was uncommon in those days. It was time for me to focus on my master's degree and giving back to the program which gave me so much. I had an energy during that time that I can't explain. Living with the boys in a place I could call home, having those incredible experiences fresh in my memory, taking those high levels classes and working jobs I loved, truly gave me inspiration. I'd been writing a lot of notes and poems in my phone, thinking about bigger ideas for my life. The boys would sit around and talk about purpose, meaning, and success, and my creative juices were flowing. On January 1st, 2018 I wrote the manifesto for Project Colon-less, which laid out a grand goal of forming a blog, traveling the world, giving back to the IBD community, and chasing after a higher purpose of putting my struggle and strife into something valuable and tangible. It was that day I started Everything Under the Sun, and kicked off one of the greatest pleasures of my life, writing. 

The next few months were spent soaking up life's greatest currency, time. The three of us put real effort into talking about what life would become when we graduated. Those conversations were both predictive forecasting and preemptive brainstorming. I still call on the wisdom of those discussions today. In between hard work and hard play, Sam managed to come back into my life. I can remember the day so vividly. It was a cold February evening at West 20 and I was sitting around with the boys late at night, imbibing as we usually did. I got a text on my phone from Sam, whom I hadn't heard from in close to a year. "I'm in your apartment complex at a party, can I stop by afterwards?" I discussed with the boys. We agreed, I was in such a good place at that time, having recently come off a small fling with a girl who introduced me to a different sort of relationship. I was living with my two best friends. I was happy at work and in school. I had a job lined up after graduation. So I said yes. 2 hours later she showed up and we talked late into the evening. She spent the night. 

In March 2018, Zach and I went to Argentina for our MIB program. Most everything about this trip was perfect, despite the fact that I was in love once again with my former ex and my health was on the verge of collapse. The streets of Buenos Aires are a sight I'll never forget. The smell of the neighborhoods where we stayed, dined, and walked, hold a special place in my memory. Zach and I bonded over late-night conversations on the balcony of an Airbnb overlooking the city. That trip satiated the itch for international travel once more. When we returned, some very serious decisions needed to be made. I begun having preliminary conversations about colon removal with a surgeon out of Mayo Clinic as well as conversations with Amazon about doing my first rotation in Jacksonville so this would be logistically possible. I also kicked off conversations with Sam about love and our future; conversations which ended in ambiguity and lack of commitment. 

May 2018, the end of an era. Graduation felt surreal, Zach was heading off to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of working in advertising. Daniel was staying in Gainesville to pursue a Master's Degree and live with his brother. And I was gearing up to go back home, to kick off my career at Amazon, figure out my relationship with Sam, and potentially undergo a life altering surgery. I was lost, disenchanted with love, and under an incredible amount of stress about my health. But boy was I grateful. I had found things that year which would change the way I fundamentally interacted and engaged with my life. Days after graduation, I decided to embark on a solo trip to Arizona. I booked 4 nights in a hotel in Flagstaff, a car upon arrival in Phoenix and an itinerary consumed by hiking. I can recall a conversation I had, in the late hours of the evening under dim lights with my father the night before I left. He told me how he too had also gone out west after graduation, feeling lost and uncertain about his future with respect to an on-again, off-again ex before my Mom. It was funny, I am my Dad's son - much about our lives are the same, from our interests in lifting weights and MMA, to our identical Senior Year superlatives, to my inheritance of his disease. I felt a sort of calling to Arizona, a place he first took me 4 years prior. And so I went. The trip was remarkable, a much needed reprieve from the hustle and bustle of the last year, and an environment to think and reflect. 

This essay is quote heavy so I'll finish it with the same theme. The American historian and Pulitzer Prize winner, David McCullough, has a wonderful quote that in many ways summarizes my journey in senior year of college. "Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you." I love this quote, because it's accurate both metaphorically and literally. You climb the mountain to get a vantage point of the world, not so that everyone has a view of you. They can't see you up there, beyond the clouds, in the isolation of the wilderness, past the point of naked-eye viewing. You do it for you. And metaphorically this is true of life. We should do difficult things, unordinary things, meaningful things for ourselves, not for praise or recognition or status. We should engage with people and behaviors and experiences that push us to evolve, particularly if they're challenging and contrarian in nature. My senior year, I avoided much of the partying to spend time in that small off campus apartment with two guys I felt a calling to get to know. I worked hard and traveled overseas 3 times for my personal development, not for reward and recognition. And I journeyed to the top of the highest mountain in Arizona, by myself, for the vantage point, not for the viewership. I'm proud of that year, for the relationships I formed, for the success I garnered, for the lessons I learned, and for the hard decisions I made when no one was looking. I walked away from college with a narrative that I can hang my hat on, with new brothers, beautiful experiences and a future I'm grateful to have.