Hey everyone!
The second half of the spring semester has started back up and man is it moving! Last week, students went home for spring break where they got a full week of relaxation, no homework, and hopefully, some much-needed time spent with friends/family before coming back to campus. And while it is nice to be home and be with family, I wasn’t super excited about dragging my luggage halfway across the country for less than a week. So, having already seen my parents during Thanksgiving and winter break, I decided to try something different with my free time rather than fly all the way back to New York. In the end, I decided to live by myself in Iowa City for the week.
Now, something you should know about me before we continue is that I’m naturally very chatty. I gather my energy from the people around me and I’m often someone who jumps from resident hall to resident hall every single night. People know me as someone who just finds their way into certain buildings at some point in the day because of how much I enjoy talking and hanging out with my friends here. I’ve started to refer to myself as the “stray dog” friend groups tend to take care of!
But the reason I’m bringing this up is to emphasize how people thought it would be difficult for me to have no one to talk to over spring break. They genuinely thought I wouldn’t survive!
But what I have to tell you is that being here alone, with no one to talk to and nothing to do, actually helped me fall back in love with the city I toured a year ago when I was still a senior in high school. It made me really adore and appreciate the college I’m going to call home for the next three years of my life.
The first thing I treated myself to every morning were the coffee shops downtown Iowa City has to offer. Since the dining halls were closed, I was forced (I saw “forced” very lightly) to walk downtown and find places to eat. I’ll admit, that ten-minute walk grew tiring by the end of the week and, strangely enough, I was grateful for the closeness of dining hall coffee and pastries, but I still want to shine some light on the phenomenal places I went to and ate at. I’ll get to restaurants in a bit, but some notable Iowa city coffee shops I went to were JavaHouse, fix!, and Cortado. My roommate and I went to fix! together for the very first time (okay, so I wasn’t completely truthful when I said I was alone in the city; I did have my lovely roommate to keep me company) and we got the chance to sit on the second floor of the Chauncy, drink good coffee, overlook Iowa City from above, and write our novels together. It was, quite literally, a writer’s paradise.
Which leads me to my next point…
Not only did I drink great coffee every day, but I also got to do things I was passionate about. Yes, I love my major, and I know English and creative writing is the career path for me, but sometimes that passion can be lost when you’re bogged down with work from a variety of classes. In some cases, it can make you resent the things you love.
This week, however, I got to edit a novel I’d been writing since the summer. I had so much fun each day finding new places to sit, write, and pour myself into a project I adore. Iowa City truly is a city of literature (a UNESCO city to be exact!) and I could really feel the magic of this place as I sat and plowed through my writing day by day.
And something else I really enjoyed, despite being the chattiest person on campus, was how beautiful the university is when it is empty. It was a ghost town. T. Anne Cleary Walkway had no students walking to class, the hallways of the resident halls were silent, and the streets were empty of cars moving back and forth. It felt like something out of a dream. Not a nightmare, but a dream.
And I say this because it made me realize that, until that week, I’d never had the opportunity to dance on the bridges arcing over the Iowa River with my music on high. I’d never watched a movie on full volume, taken up five tables to work on a painting, while being in Currier’s massive lounge area completely undisturbed. And, this is my personal favorite, I’d never gotten the chance to walk into the local Starbucks and be the only one ordering coffee at 10 am!
Yes, it really was a dream.
And at the very end of the day, I’d get to do something that I’ve never done for myself before: take myself out on dinner dates. Every night for the week, I went to a different restaurant. I know it’s scary eating alone. I know it’s weird when servers ask who’s joining you and you tell them you’re eating alone. But when you have a Pullman’s burger in your hands or a plate of noodles from Uncle Sun’s or a full pie of pizza from Pagliai’s Pizza, it doesn’t matter you’re eating alone. I treated myself to the fantastic food Iowa City has to offer and that was all the company I needed.
So, yes, while I love my friends and I missed them terribly when they were gone, being alone in Iowa City allowed me to fall back in love with the college I first toured. With no external forces; no homework, no classes, no people, and no expectations, I got the chance to do the things I wanted. I got the chance to be myself with nobody watching, and for that, I’m grateful for the experience.
If you ever get the chance, whether it be Iowa City or a whole other location, experiment with being alone. You might be surprised by what you find out about yourself in the process.