siblings

In a lot of ways, being the Midwestern golden child who left the humble fields of Daleville, Indiana to pursue the endless possibilities of the Big City feels like playing a part in a Broadway production: the cut-and-paste ingenue that’s thrust into the whirlwind of urban life and somehow manages to keep her footing. There are bragging rights in excess; it’s a quintessential Columbia student luxury to be trekking to the Met on Saturday, catching a matinee on Sunday, and topping it all off with a Brian Greene lecture bright and early Monday morning.

Mostly, I remember the shouting. My house is four stories tall—including the basement—and sprawls out haphazardly across a hill. I’m standing in my bedroom, maybe the living room, maybe the kitchen. It doesn’t really matter. The shouts barrel through doors and hallways and up and down flights of stairs and find me wherever I am.

Last week, I got an email from my brother, Brendan, with an essay I assumed was just another school assignment he wanted me to edit. However, I quickly realized that this one was different from others he’d sent me in the past. He began by describing the flushed-face, shaking-hands type of stress he feels anytime he’s prompted to speak in class, which he attributes to the part he’s come to assume in school. As the class clown, Brendan is often recognized for his comedic relief rather than his academic contributions, a realization which he openly admits with regret and embarrassment. He writes, “When I try to be smart and everyone laughs, I want to get up and leave. Not because I am mad, but because I don’t want people to see me.” The amount of times I have felt this way in school—both before and after Columbia—is immeasurable. I’d just always thought I was the only one.