Come tomorrow, and I will have completed one week here at Williamsburg. It seems so surreal, to have finally embarked on a journey one was awaiting for so long, and to find that while the journey, in a travel sense, ended with one landing on the shores of one’s destination, it has but begin in the real sense. Each day brings forth new surprises, new challenges and new realizations such as we aren’t as incompetent (or competent) as we once believed ourselves to be, or that while we may have prided ourselves on our ‘terrific’ sense of humor, in truth it really stinks, not quite the “l’air de l’humour” as much as “l’air de folie”.
Williamsburg is the most beautiful little city I have ever been to. Cities like London, Paris or Berlin exhibit their magnificence through their sheer sizes and the weight of history, but Williamsburg has history and yet a most comforting warmth. Life here isn’t quite as hurried or tense as in the big cities, maybe because it’s essentially supposed to be a relic of an age when relaxation wasn’t something people did away from home. The word ‘relic’ is most misleading, because it isn’t as if Williamsburg isn’t endowed with present-day comforts; it’s just that it prides itself on the relaxed and calm life that it offers its denizens. I don’t know whether this is the norm everywhere, but the people here seem very kind and generous insomuch that despite there not being a stop sign, they will stop their vehicles to allow pedestrians to cross the roads, or in that once in a while they will just give you a nice smile when seated opposite you in the bus.
The College of William & Mary, my home for the next two years, pervades in everything at Williamsburg. No matter where you go in Williamsburg, your status as a student just won’t leave you and that’s very much to your benefit. Just roaming around the campus would take you a good two-three hours, and that would be time well-spent, because I don’t reckon I have seen a greener campus, with the possible exception of the IIT-Mumbai campus, or a more architecturally pleasing one, again with the exception of Oxford and Cambridge. While Oxford and Cambridge have an aura, a magnificence that comes from being hoary half-millennial giants, Williamsburg’s relative ‘youth’ (the college is currently in its 316th year since incorporation) means that its structures aren’t quite as forbidding and yet have a solidity of age and time.
The new Miller Hall, where my MBA program is now housed, is simply breath-taking. Standing in the Courtyard and looking around at the structure, one feels a strange thrill rush through one’s body. The building isn’t just pleasing to the eye; it’s sophisticated within. As the Dean would say, it’s a building built to match William & Mary’s age and style but with an eye on the needs of the future. I, for one, was really impressed with the level of detail and care that has been taken to ensure that the building is geared to meet every conceivable requirement of the students and the faculty that it will house. It will be great fun to work there; 2 years may just fly past, but memories such as these would always last a lifetime.
I started out this journey with a question “Quo vadis?”, or “Where are you going?”; now I can say “I am here”.
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