The Temporary Ideal

Over the past six years, Liberty University’s campus has become an installation of the landscape—something I observe as a passerby rather than experience as a participant.

Occasionally, I’ll cut through campus, taking Williams Stadium Drive to the tunnel that dumps out onto Wards Road. But coasting through at twenty-five miles per hour is hardly the same as spending four years on the ground, steeped in the culture of the world’s largest Christian university. 

One January evening, I pulled into the parking deck near the softball stadium and drifted into a spot on the third floor. It had been nearly six years since I’d been to this part of campus. At 6 a.m. on graduation day, my parents dropped me and my soon-to-be husband off right outside the parking deck, clad in our caps and gowns and weighed down with stoles, ropes, and medals. We walked over to the football stadium together, hand in hand, for the commencement ceremony that would mark the beginning of our emergence from the campus cocoon. 

Instead of a backpack, I hiked my Portland Leather Goods tote bag over my shoulder and hit the lock button on my key fob. I stepped out of the garage and onto the sidewalk.

The crisp night air cooled my nervous sweat, and I marched down the sidewalk, feigning belonging. As I passed students wandering around the Academic Lawn, I didn’t recognize any of them, and I knew they didn’t recognize me. A few of them glanced between my face and the tarnished wedding band on my ring finger—a dead giveaway that I was not the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed graduate I was last time I was there. 

To my left, the Freedom Tower loomed—the tallest building in Lynchburg—with red spotlights illuminating its brick and glass body. I was not sure if the red was for Liberty’s brand or to celebrate the recent re-inauguration of President Donald Trump, a friend of the university and the political party married to the institution’s Evangelical Christian worldview. To my right, the shuttered Reber-Thomas Dining Hall crouched in a ditch. A few of the lights were still on, revealing empty banquet halls that used to be filled with tables and chairs. One window looked into the corner of the dining hall where I ate nearly every meal my freshman year.

I crossed the bricked street from the former dining hall to the main part of the Academic Lawn sandwiched between the Montview Student Union and several academic buildings. A few hundred feet ahead, a skateboard glided across the walkway, its rider nonchalant with his hands stuffed into his pockets. In the background, high rise dormitories stretched overhead, lights dotting the windows. 

Just past the Center for Natural Sciences and the School of Music, the Jerry Falwell Library emanated a welcoming glow in the darkness. I slipped through the front door and headed to the ladies’ room. Something as commonplace as a bathroom shouldn’t have made me emotional, but when I opened the door, I was hit with the same blast of muggy, bleach-scented air I remembered from my collegiate years. Suddenly, I was nineteen again, peering into the mirror and fussing over my waist-length hair and adjusting my clothes. 

I situated myself at a table near the entrance to wait. I was meeting a student I’d been mentoring. She’s applying for an internship I did the summer after my sophomore year, and we were going to review her resume and cover letter together. While I waited, I slipped my laptop out of my tote bag and clicked around, trying to look busy, but I wasn’t focused on the screen. 

The library was nearly indistinguishable from my memories, and I expected to see my roommate seated at one of the high-tops between the stacks, white Skullcandy headphones clamped over her ears blasting Twenty One Pilots. 

My mentee arrived. We sat next to each other at a wicker table, pages of her resume fanned on the glass worktop. I jotted things on the papers in red ink, and she nodded as I shared my recommendations. I’m not old enough to be offering career advice—I’ve barely started mine—but she eagerly soaked in my words.

I thought of my junior year of college—the people I spent time with and how excited I would have been to know, let alone spend one-on-one time with, a real writer. Just a few years ago, every connection felt like an opportunity, a seedling of potential. I snapped up volunteer positions and lent my growing skills to anything I could in order to build my resume and cultivate experiences. I deprived myself of sleep for years, worked nearly unpaid internships, and even lived in a stranger’s basement for a summer—all for the sake of personal development. 

I look back on my college years with longing—not only for the sense of adventure each day brought, but also for the ease of living in a state of noncommitment. While there were things I had to do each day, there was a certain freedom to those years I didn’t have before and I haven’t had since.

Yet as I stepped across the quiet campus to get back to my car, I realized places like college are a temporary ideal. After graduation, never again will you be able to return to the comforts provided by tuition, room, and board. An environment dedicated to learning and personal growth. A place where people are paid to invest in your personal, academic, and professional growth.

Cocoons aren’t meant to be reused. No matter how nostalgic I may get, I can’t force my way back into the comfortable cradle of my college campus. I’ve outgrown the confines of 1971 University Boulevard. 

While pangs of sentimental yearning may hit me each time I drive the portion of U.S. 460 that bisects campus, I know life outside of the Liberty Bubble is so much bigger and better than what lay within its protective membrane. Life is no longer orchestrated by tuition dollars and Student Activities and Evangelical Christian culture. I’ve been forced to blaze my own proverbial trail and learn how to exist without a provided framework. 

Some days are better than others.