Regis College - Mount Regis Yearbook (Weston, MA)

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September of 1983 saw the young woman return to many warm greetings; the crowd once so foreign and cold was now a welcoming alliance. The helpful hands and smiling faces re- mained, but they were now turned toward a new crowd of bright eyes and unsure smiles. The young woman looked over the sea of faces, and then at the mirrored reflection of her own. A year ago she could have been any one of them, but some- thing had changed. At home they said she had grown indepen- dent; she wondered at the word. She certainly didn’t feel that she could stand completely alone, yet the violent need to be surrounded by familiar faces no longer surged within her. She laughed absentmindedly and turned from the mirror. Shout- ing, she enlisted some friends to help with her refrigerator. The scheduling procedure, which a year earlier had seemed infinitely complicated, now seemed fairly simple, except that this year her choices had to be patterned around a major. The familiar surge of fear resurfaced at the thought of selecting a major, and again her future and very life seemed to rest on this one choice. The possibilities were endless, and her abilities vanished at the thought of them. After reading all the class information, checking the requirements, and seeking the ad- vice of the all-knowing upperclasswomen, she valiantly select- ed a major. Almost immediately she feared that she had made a grievous mistake; but again the strength that was growing within her surfaced and verified her choice. Decisions that she previously would have handed to others she now took upon herself, and she found that she could bear their weight as well as their consequences. Joining the procession which leads the graduating seniors to the tower, the young woman realized that her Summer was ending. She shivered at the thought of her fast approaching Autumn but stood firm, fortified by the ever increasing strength within her. The brisk air of September, 1 984 welcomed the young wom- an into her Autumn, and while the crisp air often hurt her lungs, it was also fresh and exhilarating. Having made the decision of a major, she found correlations among subjects between which previously she had seen no connection. She also began an internship which soon became a testing ground for the theories that she had learned in the classroom. Other friends had gone for a semester to study abroad where the foreign cities, rich with culture, added a new dimension to their classroom learning. And, as the class, once a crowd of strang- ers, began to develop diverse interests, they also grew closer to one another by sharing those varied experiences. The young woman laughed at the irony and understood; people are not bound only by similarities, but by the sharing of differences and the integration of those differences into themselves. 8 lntegration