Confessions of a wanderer

I have been sitting at this cafe for far too long just trying to type out the words of the first sentence of my first column. It’s ironic that I had been striving for some sort of perfection, the perfect first line, when this is a column that will be dedicated to imperfect experiences. As much as I thought it would be funny (do I dare use the term “punny” or would it scare y’all away?) to title my column after our lovely astronomy class, "Wanderers in Space," there is much truth to the name. You see, the other day, over falafel, I struggled to explain to my companion what my column was all about. I reduced it to “adventures,” but it’s really far from it. An adventurer is an Indiana Jones-like explorer, a dude that typically has some distinct facial feature and does wild shenanigans like skydive and fly to Paris on a whim. But a wanderer doesn’t strive for this perfect movie-like tale; a wanderer doesn’t even strive for the story. In reality, a wanderer just glides through life and experiences with totally open arms. I know this sounds like a lot of hippy-dippy-trippy hokiness but I’m dead serious. My friends and I are all about this lack of perfection, the cumulative experience and the weird stuff along the way, whether that means transportation inconveniences or finding ourselves stuck in a museum full of children age eight or under!

Don’t get me wrong, to be a wanderer is not an innate personality trait; in fact I spent most of my first year at Tufts the farthest thing from a wanderer in space. I guess the shift began towards the end of last semester. My friends and I just stopped shrugging our shoulders, scratching our heads and asking "What should we do today?" and instead started asking, “Where are we going today?” And we went. There was no grand philosophical reason for this, it just felt right to head off campus for a day, an afternoon, an hour, even. When you’re sucked into the Tufts bubble you forget the joyful little excursions real people do, the ones our parents would take us on when we were younger: museums, conservatories, apple farms, tours, even just a walk around the city. I guess I’m just trying to bring that back, that sense that there is more to life and being 19 than just working, eating, hanging on campus, partying, repeat. There’s a whole world out there, and I’m not promising you anything radical, I can just promise you some goofy experiences with my dorky friends around this lovely area we get to call home.

So reading this over has made me realize that I have still been sufficiently vague. And you know what, I think that’s okay because, if you must know, this really is just a totally imperfect experiment. This is a weekly recording of a random shenanigan my friends and I decide to jump into, big or small and most importantly, the process and experiences that brought us there and back. This is a break from the reality of college life and an embracing of still being young and uncommitted. This is definitely a monetarily conscious endeavor; most of our trips will be free or discounted. This is a shot in the dark. But as a self-proclaimed wanderer, I’m ready to dive into it, suck up all I can experience and retell it to you with an open mind, wishing that even just a sentence or two (those imperfectly perfect lines) will resonate. Here’s hoping.