Photograph by sidewalk_story
Usually, I look at a clock, and I see 12 hours. Just 12 hours. And when I’ve used them, they’re gone. Let’s hope I can get my act together and make every minute worth it, because I’m never getting them back.
And other times, I look at a clock, and I see a pie chart.
When you’re worried you don’t have enough time, remember this: you have all of it.
Last night I had a dream. I was going to work, and on the way I passed people I knew. Some I said “Hi” to. Two were playing guitar together. I passed the organizer of the chorus, and he asked if I knew where certain people were, because they were late for chorus rehearsal. I told him no, but I’d keep an eye out for them.
Somewhere in all this I recognized something beautiful, and I began to cry. I don’t know if I cried in real life, or just in the dream, but I cried. It was too perfect not to cry.
I went to Bard College. It’s a small liberal arts school in the Hudson Valley. The campus is beautiful. The buildings are sprawled among woods and fields, the air is clean, and there are friends everywhere.
Bard is a small school. There are about 1,200 students. You can’t know everyone well, but after four years you recognize everyone. These are your people. This is your community.
New York is too big for that. We don’t have a single community. We have many communities overlaid, and so we struggle to remain cohesive. I love my community, which I don’t think has a satisfactory name. Some call it the “tech community”. I think that’s limits us. Whatever we call it, we’re a truly awesome bunch, and I love being a part of it. But as community cohesion goes, it’s no Bard College.
Our community was stronger in college, not because we were such different people, but because of the environment. As Thomas Leonard said, “The environment always wins.” College forced us to be a tighter community.
Most of us lived in dorms, right next to each other, with roommates. We were all part of the same community. We didn’t “go home” at the end of the day. We were home.
We mostly ate in the same space: the dining hall. We shared the same food, and we sat at big tables with friends and friends of friends, whom we quickly came to know. The dining hall wasn’t just for food, either. The rest of the day it was populated with people studying or reading, or just goofing off until their next class.
Most employees work from 9-5 (or later) with the same small group of people every day. At school, we had classes made up of different groups. Every day you’d have two or three different classes, and work with a different slice of the community. And every semester those groups would change completely.
The campus wasn’t terribly big, and we were the only people there. On the paths, in the cafe, on the quad, everyone you met was potentially a friend or classmate. One of us.
After class, there was always something to do. Parties, club meetings, or a group of friends hanging out. There was something to do every night, if you wanted. And everyone there was part of the community.
I want that tightness back, and I’m willing to fight for it. I just don’t know what that looks like yet. How do you build campus life over “grownup” life as it exists today?
Coworking is the first step. Coworking brings together people working on different things to mingle and cross-polinate. New Work City is the closest thing to it I’ve found yet. But the college environment still beats coworking at this. I don’t know what the next step is, but I want to find it and get us there.
If you have any thoughts, let me know. Email me or leave a comment. This isn’t going to happen overnight, but with some perseverance, I think we can build it. I can’t wait to live in it.
Get new Nothing Undone posts in your newsreader.