My First New Haven Snowfall
I came to graduate school, especially business school, to test the limits of what I could become. I wanted to push myself farther and heighten my abilities by leaving my comfort zone. At Yale I found the perfect place to do so. I was pushed to do more, to study more, to set higher professional goals and make them a reality. For this experience, as for any challenge I have embraced in life, I was open to new experiences, to live through new adventures, and learn from different cultures and ideas. However, it was the snow that reminded me that not everyone’s experience will be the same, simply because amazing little details will make your path worthwhile, one of a kind.
I had lived through spring and summer my entire life. I was lucky to be born in Colombia, and I was thus blessed to have flowers every day of my childhood. I could not really imagine what a snowflake was like, it seemed so distant, and as everything you haven’t experienced yet, you think about it with a sense of incredibility. I knew cold, I knew rain, but in my mind, in my past, weather was more dependable, less volatile. I had not grasped completely what it would be like to have the streets, the parks, everything I knew covered in white, to see it completely transformed. I was not prepared for the calm that embraces the city after a snowstorm, the deafening silence nor the reassuring loneliness.
My first snowfall was here, in New Haven, just a few weeks ago. It was beautiful, wonderful, and it reminded me that sometimes in a world full of adult challenges, you get to live a child’s joy. New Haven was striking under the snow, Yale was so much more. It seemed like a place taken out of a dream, and I could not wait to walk around, to explore this new picturesque scenario I seemed to know, but was yet so different, so beautiful. I touched it, I twirled in it, I made snowballs, I was mesmerized, it was amazing. From that moment I knew that as time went by I would forget many things from my time here, but that was a day I would cherish forever. Words will never grasp how wonderful it really was.
As winter comes and almost goes, the feeling lingers. Every time it snows I cannot wait to take a nightly stroll. It still surprises me, and I can only hope it will never seize to amaze me, and remind me how different it is to live on different sides of the world. I just hope there are many moments like this left, making me believe there is always time and a slight possibility that your mind will be blown away.