Who Takes Care of Me?

I was walking with my boyfriend yesterday when he commented on, “the cute folds around my eye.”

“Yeah, those are premature crows feet,” I explained, “I’m getting wrinkly and old.” Then I proceeded to make crow noises on the front lawn for thirty seconds.

In some ways, I feel like I’m becoming a wrinkly old grown-up. I take vitamins every morning, (occasionally) read the newspaper, and can say things like, “The markets closed on a real high today,” and marginally understand what I’m talking about. In other ways, I feel just as young and clueless as the girl who came on campus three years ago—who wore her Hawk’s Nest shirt to the first football game with no understanding of Moco attire.

There are some lessons endemic to Lehigh culture: don’t change seats in class after the first week of the semester, you can’t take phone calls in the library, or you can always pretend someone doesn’t exist if you look down at your phone as they walk by. Then there are lessons beyond the realm of South Bethlehem: filing a W-4 tax form, remembering your social security number, or separating your darks and lights. One of the biggest lessons I learned right off the bat at Lehigh was; who takes care of me?

Freshman year, I could hear the coughing through the wall. It was winter, and the peak of flu season. Not a day went by where you didn’t hear the echoing of a puffy faced freshman in the bathroom blowing the shit out of their nose. We were getting hit left and right with disease, and none of us knew what to do. I’d see crusty-eyed first years stumble into Lower, and think to myself Why aren’t these people in the health center? Or quarantine? We were like the island of misfit toys, waiting for someone to swoop in and take care of us.

I overheard a girl whining to her roommate in the common room—“My fever is up around 100, and I literally can’t get a decent night’s sleep. My throat is so swollen I look like a frog.” Her roommate flashed a look of sympathy across her face, and went back to browsing the CollegeACB page, largely ignoring the plight of her (not-so) beloved roommate.

At the time, I thought to myself, what an epic bitch! of the girl. Now, not so much. That’s one of the first things you learn at college, who takes care of me? Being sick is one of those terrible experiences in college when you finally realize you really are on your own. No one is getting you soup, and no one is telling you not to go to school that day. You are your own gatekeeper, and I admit, that’s pretty scary. The same girl with the fever stood in the hallway the next morning, reasoning with whoever walked by on why she wasn’t going to class. I get it. You feel like someone else has to approve, but no one really cares if you are going to class or not—they’re more worried about an upcoming 4 o’clock or trying to remember what they did last night. It’s bizarre when you finally realize it’s all up to you, and that no one else cares when you skip your 8:10 Statistics class. In college, your health is very much up to you.

Full Disclosure: I’m a pretty serious asthmatic, and a habitually sick person. I’m like one of those ladies in a Victorian novel that spends about an hour in the rain, and then dies of pneumonia the very next day. I have pretty much been sick my entire duration at Lehigh, but I’ll never forget the first time I realized I actually have to take care of myself. The spring of freshman year I was in rough shape. I joined a sorority, which was awesome, but my self-imposed social schedule was leaving no time for health. I was young, with a youthful liver. I was on top of the world (or at least on top of a table stomping in a frat house), until my health took a turn for the worse.

I went home spring break with an inability to breathe properly. A quick visit to my doctor revealed my lung capacity was at around 50%, as if I had lost a lung somewhere in a pile of frackets. It took a bad case of pneumonia compounded with my asthma, and I seriously lost my breath. I took all the antibiotics my doctor asked me, and then promptly stopped when I was back and Lehigh and around the gin bucket.

Surprise, I got sick again. But this time, my mom wasn’t there to take me to the doctor. I bemoaned and sat in my bed, willing people to come take care of me. I needed tea, soup, and more importantly, someone to tell me that I needed to see a doctor. I honestly don’t understand how my roommate slept through the nights, when my coughing was reminiscent of a foghorn. When I couldn’t make my daily pilgrimage from UC to M&M, I realized I had a problem. I hauled ass to the Health Center, where my condition was so poor, the nurse practitioner looked at me like I was nuts for letting it go this far. “What were you thinking?” she asked with concern. I mumbled something about being really busy, but in reality I understood it was entirely my fault I was in such poor shape.

But, just as the girl who lived down the hall from me, I was paralyzed when it came to illness. All I had to do before college was cough a few times and my mom pulled out the thermometer and told me to take it easy. When I hacked up a lung during class discussion, no one was asking me if I wanted a cough drop. When I limped my way up from lunch to pass out in my bed, no one was there to coddle me.

Who takes care of me? (Hint: Look in the mirror).

I became very acquainted with antibiotics, and surprise, felt well. It sounds like an easy lesson after you learn it, but at the time I was truly at a loss. It’s startling when you finally realize that there is no one in your approximate vicinity that wants to wipe your nose or dote on you. Getting sick in college is like a gateway drug for independence.

Since taking myself to the doctor for the first time, I’ve made many other firsts. I booked an airline ticket, and figured out a bus schedule. I wrote my first check, and hid my first speeding ticket from my parents. I came home, and for the first time felt isolated by the salmon pink bedroom walls I had chosen in 8th grade. While the moments of independence define us, they also separate us from what we once were and bring us one step closer to who we will become.

I was on the phone with my mom last week when I suppressed a whopper of a cough. “That sounds bad,” she said, “have you gone to the health center?”

Instead of validation, I felt annoyance. “I can take care of it myself.”

I take care of me.

-Emma Diehl '13

Check out her blog HERE

You Will Succeed. Eventually.

[Design by Katherine Fletcher '16]

I was halfway through my second bowl of Captain Crunch last Thursday morning when I came to the realization that I have lied to myself my entire life—more or less.

I’ve gone through life thinking I was destined for greatness in everything I’ve done. My parents, so worried about the self-esteem phenomena may have bolstered me a little too high. I’m not blaming this entirely on my parents, but I’m just saying, they started it. At a young age, I knew I was going to be a country music singer. Never mind that I didn’t listen to country music, it was going to happen. I had the cowboy hat, and a voice—not a particularly good voice, but a voice nonetheless. I got some weird looks in the middle school hallway from wearing the cowboy hat 24/7, but I was a kid with a dream. I’m sure my fellow classmates assumed I was going through some strange Madonna-esque stage of life, due to the buckteeth/cowboy hat combo.

My parents encouraged my deluded behavior; maybe thinking I wasn’t serious, maybe thinking it was cute. My mom took it as an open invitation to buy me hats, which led to a terrible bowler phase I’d rather not discuss. My dad sincerely told me to follow my dreams. But, here’s the kicker, what if I’m especially shitty at my dreams? After a year or so of intense vocal training, I lost any passion I had to win a CMA; kicked the country music star dream, and picked up a much weirder pastime. I have no idea where the inspiration came from, but I decided to be a professional fencer.

“Fencing” is just a nicer way to say fake sword fighting. Twice a week I would spend evenings at the local rec center learning how to fence. Reflecting on it, I must’ve grown up near a very diverse rec center, but that is beside the point. The point is, why was I allowed to fence for a year? I was terrible, and only had an interest in reenacting the fencing scene from the Lohan Parent Trap. Wasting my time, and my parents’ as well, I sometimes wish they ‘d forced me to become a spelling bee champ or the like. To this day I’m not so great at my times tables, and perhaps it would’ve been worthwhile to focus on that instead of my Jack Sparrow impression. Realizing I didn’t have the drive for late night practice, or qualifying matches, my fencing career ended in under a year. The dream died even faster than my fling with country music.

Fast forward a decade or so, and I’ve grown. Not physically, I’m probably around the same height, minus the buckteeth. I can admit without shame that I am neither a country music star, nor a professional fencer. But, this doesn’t make me any less crazy.

A friend the other day asked me what I was going to do the rest of my life. This wasn’t as existential as you think, seeing as I’m graduating college soon and all we see is this empty continuum called “the rest of our lives”. I replied to her question in a cocky way. I would be a writer, of stories, articles, books, opuses, you know? Maybe produce a piece of literature to rival the Bible, or at least Harry Potter? My friend responded to my half sarcastic comment with sincerity, assuring me that I was an excellent writer. I was ready to accept this as fact chiseled in rock, when something snapped. Like a detective noticing when the prime witness slips, everything started to go slow motion, and there was that Law & Order “dunk dunk” sound going off in my head.

This friend of mine had never read a work of mine, and okay, okay I understand. She was being nice. But, this pseudo-compliment led me to wonder—what does it really mean to follow your dreams?

Why didn’t my parents tell me the cowboy hat wasn’t doing me any favors? They could’ve pointed me in the direction of cobbling or taxidermy, hobbies that may have better suited me than country music. But no, they encouraged my dream to the point where I thought I could do anything. I dreamed big, with no follow through.

Now in my 20s, I have to wonder if I’ll succeed at what I’ve put my mind to. Since given my first journal, I’ve been writing nonstop. I believe in myself, but in the course of this essay I’ve proven I’m not really trustworthy. I’ve given up many times before in crazier pursuits. Does it matter if crazy people believe in themselves? If a crazy person compliments his or herself in the forest, does anyone hear it?

This truth only came crashing down on me during a phone call with my dad. After raising two older girls, I think he’s become a bit of a realist towards my problems. On the precipice of tears, I explained how I am a phony (you understand, because I talk like Holden Caulfield most of the time).

“I just feel like I’m out there. In a sea. Or ocean? What’s the difference? Anyway, I’m out there, with like, no ropes or pool noodles, and there’s a storm of sharks surrounding me or something” I lamented, “I’m not sure I’m meant to do what I love.”

“You’ve never picked the clear path…” my dad said, and followed that up with a family anecdote I wasn’t entirely listening to. “You will succeed. Eventually,” my father’s soliloquy concluded with Buddha-like certainty. Not, “You’ll do great” or “I believe in you,” but with the far more ominous, something good will happen to you sometime.

I’ve been meditating on this little advice nugget for a good thirty minutes now, and I realize he’s right. I also realized that’s exactly what I’ve been preparing for my entire education at Lehigh. These past four years have taught me more about myself than I believed possible.

Through speakers and workshops, classes and lectures, I’ve been surrounded by success that didn’t always come easy. Those who find success possess the winning combination of passion balanced with determination. We have students on campus engineering cures to cancer, making amazing art, and beating Duke. No one’s calling them crazy. If we called Jesse Reno a crazy person, we’d all still be huffing and puffing up stairs instead of taking the escalator. If we called Howard McClintic and Charles Marshall crazy, we wouldn’t have the Panama Canal, or the anagram “A man a plan a canal, Panama”.

What I’m trying to say, in this long-winded rant is, my time at Lehigh has taught me to “Work Hard. Play Hard, and then Work A Lot More”. If I put my mind to it, I can use what I’ve learned here to persevere. I’m not saying success will find me in all of my ventures, but eventually, I will succeed. It won’t just be my crazy dream of writing for a living that leads me to success, but also the determined passion. I gave up my silly hobbies because I lacked the determination to continue them. This time, I’m truly passionate about what I’m doing, and I can’t imagine just giving it up.

(Final) Case and point--where you are reading this: The Goblet. It’s an idea, sort of crazy, started by students. But if it weren’t a little bit crazy, and a lot ambitious, it wouldn’t be a Lehigh idea. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I am saying, “You will succeed. Eventually.”

-Emma Diehl '13 
Check out her blog HERE.