The Tuftonian Dream: Blank slate

When you were young, you maybe had a dream. You were going to fly to the moon, pass EC 5, cure cancer. Then, you grew up. You cut your hair, chose your major, changed your outlook. You changed a lot, but did you change your dream?

First-year Zack Gould came to Tufts in August with a bunch of tennis rackets, a bunch of interests and no beard. He had spent the entire summer growing out a thick, bushy layer of facial hair, but at the last moment, he says, “I decided to shave my beard. I wanted to look clean-cut when I arrived.” Now, as the proud possessor of a vast wealth of auburn whiskers, Zack elaborates, “I wanted to be a blank slate so that people would have no preconceptions about me.”

Back home, his brother’s friends see him and assume that he’s a stoner, but unless they were to read his more alternative eighth-grade writings, they would have no reason to draw such a shady conclusion. Zack has always identified as a goody two-shoes, but in middle school, he remembers, “I wanted to be an author.” He grew up in a town where the inhabitants boast a vast wealth of American dollars, and once, he recalls with a self-aware laugh, “I wrote a story about these hedgehogs. It was really dark and twisted, but one of the hedgehogs rebelled against society and got executed at the end.” Reflecting on the senseless slaughter of his spiky subject, he notes, “The dark humor was a way of exploring themes that I didn’t get to experience in real life … I’m a friendly person, so being able to take on a different persona through my writing allowed me to challenge society more than I do in real life.”

In high school, unlike the ill-fated hedgehog, Zack never challenged society. He helped organize a tennis tournament to fund cancer research, and he says, “I was very involved in my community.” Over time, though, he realized, “I didn’t love writing for the joy of it but for discovering my own identity.” He had succeeded in developing his own sense of humor, and he expresses, “Coming to college, I wanted to start a new chapter in my life.”

He started by embracing his burgeoning beard, and he has continued by exploring new possibilities at Tufts. Zack is a passionate man who hopes to find his primary passion, and he explains, “I came in saying I wanted to do IR because I didn’t know what I wanted to necessarily do … I’ve been more in tune with the interests of other people because of that.” For example, he joined the club tennis team as a matter of course, but he never imagined himself on a coarse meditation mat alongside his roommate.

Zack can’t fully envision his future, either, but he asserts, “Personally, I’m very content with where I am right now.” He strokes his beard, meditates on the topic for a minute, and then concludes, “My dream for life in general is to be happy myself and to be in a situation where I make a difference in people’s lives.”