A Freshman Fascination

    I am extremely lucky.  I am not that good at putting words down, making grand speeches, or playing any kind of musical instrument other than the train whistle, but I am extremely lucky.  How else could I explain the radical change in my surroundings?  How do I explain the transformation from the dusty rut-filled backcountry South Carolina dirt roads that the county fails to maintain to the awesome Gothic backdrop that is Duke University?

    You might laugh at my superstitions concerning the rapping of wooden surfaces, crossings of black cats, presence of crows, all too convenient karma, and broken mirrors, but I believe in luck, at least my definition of the word.

    I just got back from a Mississippi duck hunting trip that I took over winter break.  The conditions for a great hunt were on two sides of a questionable spectrum, great or terrible.  After getting into Money, Mississippi around 1:00 a.m., my good friend from the fifth grade (who, I might add, also goes to Duke),  and I woke up to fall prey to the whims of the beautiful avian creature called the duck.      

    On this trip, we saw thousands of ducks.  They filled the air around us with an euphony of quacks combined with the beating of the air against their bright wings.  I have seen beauty before in my life and this event certainly qualifies. These birds captivated my obsessive interest and flew all around our duck blind, however, none flew close enough to be put into the boat (killed, bagged, or my personal grammatical mistake busted out of the sky, etc.).  For the life of us, we could not find the right “spot,” a working outboard motor, or an open stretch of water not iced over two inches thick.  I will spare you the dramatics and say we only killed 4 trash ducks.

    Some people may say that the freak arctic blast we traveled through was chance and the same may be remarked upon the unlikely bayou where thousands of ducks decided to light but I call it luck.  Because everything that could go wrong went wrong (from holes in waders, no running water, burst water pipes, sickness, near-death experiences, bad shells, broken trailer lights, visits by the wonderful game warden, terrible directions, and etc.), however, at the same time everything was just right.  I lie, everything was more than just right, in my opinion, it was amazing.

    This is my experience at Duke.  Over scholarship weekend everything that could go wrong went wrong (the silence of a wake-up alarm, the mad dash resulting in square inch blisters, the wrong bay location, the profuse sweat, the unaligned buttons on a collared shirt, the enigma that is Duke’s campus to every neophyte; all on the morning of my scholarship interview), however, everything then and now is more than just right, its phenomenal.  This is a phenomenon.

    How else do you explain the fact that I am going to college with my best friend since the 5th grade, the participation in the sharing of ideas unique to Duke’s college campus, the brotherhood I have fostered with my roommate, the community of friends that challenges me everyday with its intense rewards, and the family that the Benjamin Newton Duke scholarship program is to me? The only word that comes to mind is magical.  I came to Duke because I believe in magic and I found it here.

    I put more stock in gratitude than accomplishments and if ever there was a time for being grateful it is now.  I am grateful for: first and foremost, my mother, who loves me more than any woman on this planet, my father, for understanding his son as only a father can, my sister, for being there and knowing exactly who I am, my dog, for mutual understanding, all my teachers, for lessons taught without and within a book, my friends, for making me laugh, and to all my friends at Duke, you know who you are, for making the first semester of my college experience unforgettable in so many ways, and to the BN Duke scholarship program, for making this a reality and being a great source of support. Finally, to Sasha and Jane, words fail to express, and to Duke, where everyday is an opportunity to be fascinated.

Luck, phenomenon, magic. Call it what you will, but to me it goes by the name of Duke.