When energy and possibility start to bubble...

I see roads, stretching out in every direction with signposts that demark possible experiences, possible writings of a story that is as yet unwritten. After a particularly wonderful session of yoga in which I felt completely oxygenated and as if my muscles had worked to their max, my head was milling with ideas.

I’d picked up a flyer from the Institute of Renaissance Studies of Ferrara announcing a lecture series happening next week. My area of concentration at Harvard is Italian Studies and History of Art and Architecture, so it drops me right into the Renaissance pushing me towards an obligatory senior thesis. Since I am swimming in Orlando Innamorato, a book written by Boiardo for the Estense Court in Ferrara in the late 1400s, I swam a little further into the possibility of perhaps writing a senior thesis about the Castello Estense, or the Estense court…

Being a Harvard student, I am already thinking about the summer, what I will do… Being the last summer before graduating I had thought that this coming summer would be a crucial time in career exploration. I am warming up to the idea of spending 5 weeks at the Graduate School of Design in either Architecture or Urban Design. Maybe I’ll study architecture, write a senior thesis with an architectural spin and move on to work with my Dad. I hadn’t ever really embraced the idea before, but during these weeks of thinking and experience, I’ve let go some of my stupid hang-ups.

I dream that I’ll participate in the year-long internship at the Museum of Modern Art in New York after I graduate. Maybe I’ll write for some newspaper, write books. Maybe I’ll own a gallery. Maybe I’ll become a photographer, a professor. I’ve been writing everyday, taking photos every weekend, reading loads of Italian, getting more and more immersed. The ideas start to bubble as I grasp the Italian and sink my teeth into the ideas. And when the ideas start bubbling, my mind starts wandering and squinting into the distance. I see great courses at Harvard in the spring, possible jobs, new roommates… It is just an endless road that keeps stretching on, still foggy, undefined.