The Thrill is proud to feature personal narratives courtesy of the Project for Open Voices. Today’s essay was authored anonymously, in October of this year.
Flashback to freshman year, October—my friends and I are finally starting to figure out how things work here. Settling into a routine hundreds (sometimes thousands) of miles away from home is never easy, but this had been much more difficult than I would have liked to admit. But despite the stress of academia and the fluid social circles, everything is starting to make sense. Parents’ Weekend is here. We’ve all heard about it—it’s a Kenyon tradition! Parents come to Kenyon, join our little bubble for a couple days; everyone puts on their best, happy, sober faces and seeks to assure their families that the investment they made in this little school was a wise one.
My parents, of course, couldn’t make it. I’m definitely not alone in that. I had done my best to make sure they didn’t even find out that Parents Weekend was a Kenyon “thing.” But they did, and sure enough, my Father called me that day to half-heartedly let me know how sorry he is that they couldn’t make it. I’ll never forget how defeated he sounded.
