I remember the first time I walked around Brown’s campus with my family. Only a freshman in high school, I was in awe of the hustle and bustle surrounding me. We were following the typical Northeast road trip route for my older sister, who had recently started her college application process, and Providence was midway between our starting point of D.C. and destination of Boston.
At the time, I didn’t recognize the vast lawn we passed by as the Quiet Green, nor the intimidating building looming above to be the Rock. Back then, that’s all they were to me: vast and intimidatingly unfamiliar.
It’s interesting how places change based on our interactions with them over time. The park by my house once held so much ambiguity until I explored the space with caution and fresh excitement. Since then, I have spent endless hours rolling around in the grass and climbing the many trees with my sister. More than just a rock, the boulder in the middle was a fortress against my sister when she was “it,” a throne when playing court, and endless other entities limited only by our imaginations. Now, I look back on the park as a core aspect of my childhood and what brought my sister and me together.
Just like that park, Brown is being reshaped through the breadth of my experiences here. I have lost the initial objectivity I held when walking through the campus. I now move through the parking lot my dad struggled to find on move-in day without thinking twice. I have spent countless late nights talking in the SciLi, which I originally saw as just a bizarrely tall building among the restaurants on Thayer. The Quiet Green and Rock, which I remember as being so daunting upon my first visit, are now basic snippets of my daily life here.
Sometimes, I wish I could look at the places I am so familiar with through a fresh lens—experience their beauty anew. I feel nostalgic considering the possibility of watching the fall leaves sprinkle the ground or taking in the expanse of Providence from the SciLi’s top floor again for the first time.
However, becoming so familiar with these sights does not necessarily mean I am desensitized to their beauty. I am so grateful that my positive interactions with a space only add to its beauty, giving it a unique flavor crafted by my own experiences. Beauty is subjective and crafted by each person’s understanding of, and encounters with, a place. My first semester in Brown’s niche and now-familiar spaces have made this campus ever more charming to me.
