As someone who has lived exclusively in the Northeast, I eagerly anticipate the changing seasons each year. I’ve spent winter mornings with my nose pressed up against the glass of my bedroom window, waiting for enough snow to accumulate for school to be canceled. I’ve spent spring afternoons walking my dog, basking in the first glimpse of warmth. I’ve spent fall nights curled up under my weighted blanket, listening to the wind blow against leaves that would soon fall from the trees in my backyard. I’ve spent summer days driving around Scranton, Pennsylvania with my windows down, indulging in country music that I would normally despise if the weather weren’t above 80 degrees.
Living alongside the seasons has become a ritual for me. As soon as it gets cold enough to wear a sweater, a new autumn playlist appears on my Spotify. As soon as I can wear a sundress around campus without shivering, the spring playlist makes its return. There’s always a song on my seasonal playlists that becomes the background music to my daily life. This past winter, it was “Supercut” by Lorde. In the fall, it was “Vampire Empire” by Big Thief. The song of the spring is still up in the air, but strong contenders include “California” by Joni Mitchell, “Slide Tackle” by Japanese Breakfast, and “Octopus’s Garden” by The Beatles. When the season ends, the songs will disappear from my rotation until the next year. I like to think of them as notes to my future self.
As I was crafting my spring playlist for this year, I looked back at last year’s version for inspiration. I pressed shuffle, and the familiar sound of Boygenius streamed through my AirPods. Walking along Yale’s uneven cobblestone, listening to the same music and stumbling over the same potholes as I did last year, I wondered how much I’ve actually changed during the past twelve months. On a macro-scale, nothing in my life is drastically different. I have the same friends, wear the same clothes, even order the same drink at Atticus.
But things have changed. Summer passed slowly; I walked around the streets of New Haven, learning to exist on campus without all of my friends here. Those were the days filled with rock climbing, solo East Rock hikes, and taking care of the two thousand high school students enrolled in the Yale Young Global Scholars program. Autumn was a period of growth. After braving one too many situationships, I entered a period of reflection, working to shed my self-doubt with the falling leaves. Winter came all at once. The cold descended on New Haven one fateful day in November, and for months, I sped to classes to escape the biting chill.
But now it’s spring, and the sun shines down on Cross Campus once again. As I sat in the grass today—the same patch that I’ve sat on dozens of times before—I felt wholly myself. I don’t think I could have said the same a year ago. I still feel the ghosts of my old insecurities when I listen to the songs that I loved during my freshman year. But they’re subtle now, only floating in and out of my memory when I hear Phoebe Bridgers or Fiona Apple.
