It's been snowing a lot lately.
For the sake of safety, when it snows, diligent workers at Tufts line the roads with salt. As an international student from a tropical country where snow is a magical foreign myth, I resorted to asking a friend how salt can melt snow. The answer is simple chemistry (also something quite foreign to me, but in this case, just because I have never been good at chemistry): salt in water lowers the freezing point of the water, therefore not allowing snow and rain to freeze into ice.
But that’s beside the point.
The point is, ever since the first snowfall in December, I have not yet seen Tufts “un-salted” on a snowy day. The gravelly scrape beneath my feet as I walk to class has become familiar. One morning in late January, however, I woke up to a blinding light outside the window. Thinking the sun had finally come up, I eagerly opened the blinds only to discover that the brightness was from the sunlight reflecting off the snow. And boy, did it snow: the ground covered by a fluffy sheet, tree branches straining just slightly under the weight of snowflakes clinging to the bark, roofs of houses a uniform white.
On my way to class, I realized that the unexpected snowfall overnight meant that no one had salted the roads. As I first stepped onto the sidewalk, my boots sank through the blanket of snow. Coated by that fluffy powder, I trudged to class. It hit me, though, as I rushed down Professors Row: Tufts was a real winter wonderland. Without the stark asphalt of plowed roads, snow covered every inch of the school, from Prez Lawn to Dowling Bridge. In the early morning, distanced from the bustling crowd of midday classes, Tufts was raw and unadorned.
The rare sight struck a chord within me. Since being at Tufts, I have worried about tons of things, from my grades to that test I messed up on, to extracurricular stress and chaos in my social life, to sleeping 4.5 hours a night on weekdays and 10 hours on the weekend. However, now that the individual pieces of my life were falling into place, I could finally pause, bask in the snow and the chilly wind that drew needles in my cheeks, and appreciate how lucky I was to be at Tufts…
… and to be content.