People Make The Place: My Journey To Newhouse
This same time last year my days were filled with daily trips to the revelation center where I had to learn to walk again. I had broken my ankle on three places and apparently that tiny bugger is rather vital for walking; it took me a month to shower without help. Confined to my bed, the first week was filled with feeling sorry for myself and re-watching my favorite episodes of my favorite TV show. That gets boring after a while. Very boring. So boring that I swiped the dust from the GRE practice books that I’d ordered a long time ago, but had not given a second look ever since. I studied, I wrote letters begging for funding, I studied some more and I wrote even more pleading letters. I made serious work of getting into Graduate school.
Getting accepted and, almost as important, getting the necessary funding, was a bittersweet victory. I’m from a tiny provincial town in the Netherlands. Its name you would not be able to pronounce. The number of people that make it from there to one of the most prestigious communication schools on the American east coast is as high as people who went to Mars and back. That’s the sweet part. For once mother could brag about me instead of complaining in the local pub. It was bitter because it meant saying goodbye to Lima, Peru’s capital and my home for the past three years. According to Psychologist Benjamin Schneider, our notion of “home” and “place” is colored by and constructed with the people associated with a place; people are the place.
My place in Lima was a beautiful mix of people from the four corners of the world; at parties you’d hear French, Spanish, German, Dutch, English and Japanese. We worked for the public sector or for NGO’s, and we had long hours, but we did that gladly because we firmly believed that the projects we worked on would make the Peru of tomorrow a bit better than the Peru of today. Weekends were filled with hikes in the mountains or road trips along the winding coast of the beautiful country. My day started with an hour in the Pacific Ocean on my surf board, a wonderful way to start even the most difficult of days.
My choice for Newhouse was a rational one: they offered me the highest amount of scholarship, their name on the degree will further my career, even in my part of the world. The hands-on mentality of their fast-paced program was also appealing. I wanted to get down to business. My social life would circle around video chatting with my friends as opposed to being with them. I probably wouldn’t even have time for that. I was only half right. Yes, my days are filled to the brim with projects, papers and don’t get me started on the books and articles I need to read for tomorrow and the ones I should have read yesterday. Be that as it may, in the three months that I’ve been here I’ve met a bunch of people who are as colorful as they are interesting. A few examples. My first roommate was a TV-presenter from Mumbai and asked Hugh Jackman about his “derriere” once in an interview, I’ve had classes with a navy officer from San Diego and a jovial lad from Scotland who’s always in for a “wee drink” and in my class there are two twins from Tennessee who are sharp as whips and have a mutual love for good bourbon and advertising. Of course, this is only a small fraction from all the interesting people I came to know.
My point is this: Newhouse offers you all the tools a school can offer you to kick-start your career, and it also to gives you the opportunity to form friendships with people who are just as driven as you. It makes the missing of my friends back home almost bearable. A Dutch poet wrote that “returning is very different from staying”, that’s probably true and that’s all right. I know that my board is waiting for me in Lima to try out some morning waves, just as I know that my friends will have an extra beer in the fridge with my name on it.
