It was late August, 2023. I was hot, red-faced, dripping with sweat. My heart was racing – from the three trips up and down twenty-three stories or from the debilitating anxiety and uncertainty, I wasn’t sure. There were nine of us, plus a few siblings and too many parents, and we all tried to act cool around each other even though any one of us could have (and later would have) broken down and cried. It was late August when I unknowingly stepped foot into a too-small room inside a too-small suite that would change my life.
My suitemates were my first community and, two years later, my closest community. We were each others’ therapists before we knew about the Counseling Center, we were each others’ financial advisors before we knew about Career Services, we were each others’ built-in friends before we even knew who we were going to become. It’s surreal to look back on this moment now; I seem to have forgotten the period of time in which we transitioned from roommates to family. Maybe it was when we played We’re Not Really Strangers the first night, or maybe it happened so slowly over our first year that I never noticed the change, but it feels like our community has existed as long as we’ve been alive; it feels like I know each one of them inside and out – and they me.
Two members of this community, Leah Eastwood and Caroline Lattanzio, offer their insight into the necessity of community in finding ourselves and developing our talents. Something I’ve found to be missing in conversations around a certain unifying skill, trait, or opinion is the importance interacting with a diverse range of talents. Yes, as an English major, I thrive in the community I’ve built within the English department. They commiserate with me on the struggles of research as much as they push me to dive deeper, to follow the rabbit hole. But if I was surrounded by this throughout my university experience – if Leah was only surrounded by Film majors or Caroline by Business majors – I likely would not only grow tired of it, but also fail to learn anything else. From Leah, I have learned nuances of screenwriting and directing I wouldn’t have otherwise. From Caroline, I have gained insight into the inner-workings of the music industry.
Caroline and Leah tend to agree with me. “I moved to New York City from Arkansas to avoid being around the same type of person every day,” Caroline notes. Similarly, Leah is glad that our suite had such a vast range of majors, interests, and talents. Seeing other suites break up because they were all members of the same – very competitive – major was disheartening. When we weren’t all competing with each other it was because we used our knowledge and talents collaboratively to help on a creative final or a research project and, miraculously, they all seemed to fit together perfectly.
The Pforzheimer Honors College at Pace provided us a similar diverse range of people, though who all had one thing in common: drive. Being around passionately motivated people – regardless of your talent or theirs – is necessary to keep going when it gets tough. Our Honors advisors are also a huge help in discovering our niches, assuring us that everyone has something that they’re good at, even if we don’t know it yet. Then, like our suitemates and our major departments, they push us to follow that niche, to try it out if not build a career in it. College is a unique time in which our lives are dedicated to perfecting a craft and to learning from everyone else’s crafts as they master their own. There is support and there is help everywhere around us, and it’s not hard to find if we only look.
However, there may be nothing so unique in this way as attending university in New York City. Leaving our tiny city campus, we find ourselves with exponentially more opportunity and community than we ever could have thought. Everyone you pass on the street is doing something cool, exciting, and necessary. Everyone has important knowledge and advice to impart. We just have to listen.
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By Lauren Male
Lauren is a senior at Pace University majoring in English and Communications, with a minor in Journalism. She is pursuing Pace’s M.S. Publishing program. When she’s not reading, Lauren can be found trying new coffee shops, thrift shopping, and spending all of her money on concert tickets.
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