“When are you coming home?!” Text message received at 4 a.m. Don’t my friends back in California know that not everybody lives on West Coast time? I can’t blame them for wondering what I’m doing so far away. I just completed my sophomore year at Cornell, and I haven’t been home since Christmas.
I choose this school because I couldn’t stand the thought of following my peers to a California school. I wanted a new experience. The same rebel in me firmly decided I wasn’t going to budge this summer. I wanted to stay. In Ithaca. I think it’s independence that I wanted. To not live under the roof of my parents’ house, however comforting that may seem. To not to share a life and an apartment with my identical twin sister, who also goes to Cornell. Couldn’t I stand to be without her for just three months? I thought I could. At least, I would try to.
My sister flew home and I started my internship on the same day: May 14. It was a monumental day, which ended in breathless phone calls about home and the weather, my new job and assignments. While she commutes to her internship with Universal Records in Santa Monica, I walk up and down State Street in Ithaca for mine. Polar opposites. The thought made me smile. Besides, I told myself, imagine how much money I’m saving on gas! I was certain I was the favorite daughter now. I pictured myself as a young woman on a soul-searching expedition.
And our Collegetown apartment—it was finally all mine! With five bedrooms and three couches, I found myself wondering where to sleep each night. I occasionally wandered into my sister’s room, hoping to complete the day’s outfit with a piece from her closest. Then I remembered she took almost everything with her.
Before I knew it, June had disappeared as quickly as it came, like the upstate New York thunderstorms I am just beginning to get used to. And soon followed the Fourth of July! I was excited to celebrate with new friends. It wasn’t the traditional Fourth with a party at my family’s house, filled with relatives, friends, and neighbors, many whose names I should have remembered but never quite could. This year, I spent the day with several girlfriends, barbecuing and watching the fireworks at Ithaca College. Some sparks and ashes drifted nearby, threatening a few dry trees. I wondered if there was such thing as too much independence. A few days later my sister called to tell me about the fires in Southern California and the nearby ashes that turned the sky a somber grey. Our house was in the clear, but close enough to feel the impact.
I received plenty of advice from friends who are staying, have stayed, will summer in Ithaca. “Don’t stay here all summer, Jenny. You’ll go nanners.” Nanners? Oh, bananas, right. Well, I’ll be careful of that. I’m going home in August. The fires will have died out by the time I arrive—I hope.
Jenny Niesluchowski '10 was a CAM intern this summer.