Zachary Noyce: The realization that you can never really go home again

Someone who has hopefully been either dead or senile long enough that he won't mind my plagiarizing him once said, "You can never go home again."

After this break, all I can say is, "I hear you."

I guess Thomas Wolfe (whose estate is ever-so-generous in not suing me) didn't go to a commuter campus. How else could he so perfectly understand how I felt over the break? How else could he have predicted the America West flight delays that almost made him literally accurate? How else could he so perfectly capture the way I felt back in ("Scenic!"/ "Ski!"/ "Hunt!" / "Convert the Heathen!") Utah?

Sitting around in the house where I grew up, I couldn't help but think how anticlimactic this "there and back again" experience had been. I think that sometime during this winter break, I decided that "there and back and then there again (as fast as possible)" is much more beautiful music to my ears.

Penn has changed me. Since I came to college, I've learned so much: about myself, others, the world and PennCard-swiping techniques, but of course nothing about economics -- what was I thinking? Now I needed to show off my newfound knowledge to an unsuspecting, unprepared -- and God-willing -- captive audience.

I would shock them by demonstrating that speaking without a drawl is possible. I would crack them up with a wit they never imagined (and one I don't really possess -- but hey, this is a fantasy). I would astound them with my expertise in subjects ranging from history and politics to ... well ... history and politics. And then I would sing them to sleep with my bittersweet tales from the life of a funny-looking, short suburban kid who lost a leg (OK, not really) but somewhere among the hallowed Ivy-covered walls found himself. (Coming to a theater near you!)

Like a fly on Atlas' shoulder, my dreams just can't stand the weight of reality. I was anxious to tell my story to everyone I knew. Anyone who looked familiar would do, but everyone was familiar (all white people look the same, after all), so no one was. Everyone had moved on with their lives, and no one cared who I was, who I'd become or what I learned. And when I told the tale, it was far less interesting than I thought.

Somewhere between the embarrassing quantities of media consumed and the equally embarrassing quantity of food consumed, I realized that there are no comings of age; there is just coming age. Life is wonderful, but our realizations will not change the courses or fabrics of our lives. And to be obligatorily hypocritical, I feel required to say that this realization will change my outlook on life forever.

Go ahead and take your coming of age; I'll just let my age come.

That's not to say that life experiences aren't important. Quite the contrary, actually. It is to say the things in life that matter are not the things we think (sorry, philosophy majors) but the way we act.

This is a unique time in our lives when we necessarily make decisions that dictate much of our future. That, however, does not make these years some be-all-end-all experience when we choose between life with a South Beach condo and life with a TV box on Broadway. It's too easy to think of college as a time where we make important decisions and to cheapen the value of this time by thinking them so pivotal that they can't be considered part of our lives.

And that's why Thomas Wolfe mocked us over winter break, pointing out that we "can never go home again." Going home again is going back in time to a life that we do not live anymore. This is where our lives have taken us, so for now this is the place where they will continue. Too bad that means we have a couple thousand pages (and a half-thousand dollars) of reading.

Of course, I may be beating Mr. Wolfe at his own game because when I stepped on this campus, I was home again. It's not the home with my crayon scribbles on the walls. It's the home where I am progressing as a human being. I think I fully understand what he meant in saying "you can never go home again." You can't go back to an old life. You can't live in the past because that's not where your home is. Your home belongs where you are living your life.

It's nice to be home.

Zachary Noyce is a freshman in the College from Taylorsville, Utah. The Stormin' Mormon appears on alternate Fridays.

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