That night, the glow-in-the-dark ball skittered across the ice.

My opponent and I, brooms in

hand, charged forward. We collided and I banana-peeled, my head taking the brunt of the impact.
Stubborn as I was, even with a concussion, I wanted to remain in class and do everything my
peers did, but my healing brain protested. My teachers didn’t quite know what to do with me, so,
no longer confined to a classroom if I didn’t want to be, I was in limbo. I began wandering
around campus with no company except my thoughts. Occasionally, Zora, my English teacher’s
dog, would tag along and we’d walk for miles in each other's silent company. Other times, I
found myself pruning the orchard, feeding the school’s wood furnaces, or my new favorite
activity, splitting wood. Throughout those days, I created a new-found sense of home in my
head.

However, thinking on my own wasn’t enough; I needed more perspectives. I organized raucous
late-night discussions about everything from medieval war machines to political theory and 
randomly challenged my friends to “say something outrageous and defend it.” And whether we
achieve profundity or not, I find myself enjoying the act of discourse itself. As Thoreau writes,
“Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves, the waves may cast up pearls.”
I have always loved ideas, but now understand what it means to ride their waves, to let them
breathe and become something other than just answers to immediate problems.