I’ve got my bus route, I’ve got my ORCA card, and I’ve got a map of the city laid out in my head. I wake up at 6:30, put on my shirt and slacks, and head out the door. Depending on how I’m feeling, I might grab a cup of coffee after departing the bus tunnel at the International District bus stop. I make the short walk up to work, looking down Jackson Street at the blue-white shining of Puget Sound before the mountains in the distance. I head up to my office, sit down in the small conference room, and my day begins.
I work daily from 8:30 am until 5:00 pm, stopping at some point for a quick lunch break. The post-work plans change from day to day, but after over seven weeks, I finally feel like I’m in a rhythm. Seattle is where I live, and I’m no longer from out of town. All of a sudden, an email from Neil Hoefs comes through. “UW Check-out Information” it reads, and suddenly my heart drops.
Seattle this summer has been an 8-week whirlwind of challenges, triumphs, and everything in between. I have learned the stories of fifteen other Duke students from vastly different backgrounds. I have spent the last two months working at Disability Rights Washington, surrounded by people who have inspired me with their passion for their work. I have explored the city both through my work and on my own, and have discovered a place of vibrant, progressive culture.
It was then only natural for an email like the one I received from Neil the other day hit me hard. It has taken me over 7 weeks of both struggles and successes, but Seattle has become home. Why would I ever leave a place like this? The waterways are beautiful, the weather has been perfect, and seemingly every weekend there is a different cultural festival for me to sink my teeth into (sometimes literally). Seattle, more than any other major American city I’ve been to, is a community of individuals with a vision. It is ripe soil for the innovative thinker to cultivate, a place where ideas and ideals come together.
I am excited to return to Duke. I am excited to move into my shiny new off campus apartment, make new memories, and grow another year in a fashion that is only possible at a place like Duke. But how do I leave DukeEngage? How do I leave a city I’ve come to know so well and love so dearly?
I think there is a part of me that fears normalcy. There is a part of me that views Duke as “pre-DukeEngage”, a place where I existed before this summer happened. We were warned at the DukeEngage Academy not to force our perception of the experience to be something “life-changing”, that the experience would be for each individual what it would be and that our impact on our community would be our primary output, not its impact on us. I’m not sure that the service itself was life changing. Sure, I learned a lot about how to handle myself in the workplace, and sure, I feel like I made a difference. What was life changing for me was what DukeEngage didn’t prepare me for. It was learning the stories of not only these fifteen other incredibly gifted individuals, but also many, many others who live outside the proverbial Duke “bubble”.
It was about walking through downtown, imagining myself with a wheelchair making an attempt to navigate intersections without curb cuts, without knowledge of more than a few English phrases. It was about identifying with someone the same age as me whose parents had kicked him out of the house for smoking marijuana when he was thirteen, and had been homeless for eight years already. Stories like these are difficult to come by on a beautiful campus in Durham, North Carolina, surrounded by incredibly gifted (and often incredibly privileged) college students who, through one avenue or another, have found their way to an incredible opportunity in their life.
It is not the academics, the athletics, the prestige, or even the campus that separates Duke. What makes Duke the most incredible university in the country are the ways in which it takes its resources and applies them to make real, engaging difference in the world. If I have played even the smallest part of forwarding this special University’s mission, I am both forever proud and forever better for it.
Dalton Brown
Duke Student '15
I work daily from 8:30 am until 5:00 pm, stopping at some point for a quick lunch break. The post-work plans change from day to day, but after over seven weeks, I finally feel like I’m in a rhythm. Seattle is where I live, and I’m no longer from out of town. All of a sudden, an email from Neil Hoefs comes through. “UW Check-out Information” it reads, and suddenly my heart drops.
Seattle this summer has been an 8-week whirlwind of challenges, triumphs, and everything in between. I have learned the stories of fifteen other Duke students from vastly different backgrounds. I have spent the last two months working at Disability Rights Washington, surrounded by people who have inspired me with their passion for their work. I have explored the city both through my work and on my own, and have discovered a place of vibrant, progressive culture.
It was then only natural for an email like the one I received from Neil the other day hit me hard. It has taken me over 7 weeks of both struggles and successes, but Seattle has become home. Why would I ever leave a place like this? The waterways are beautiful, the weather has been perfect, and seemingly every weekend there is a different cultural festival for me to sink my teeth into (sometimes literally). Seattle, more than any other major American city I’ve been to, is a community of individuals with a vision. It is ripe soil for the innovative thinker to cultivate, a place where ideas and ideals come together.
I am excited to return to Duke. I am excited to move into my shiny new off campus apartment, make new memories, and grow another year in a fashion that is only possible at a place like Duke. But how do I leave DukeEngage? How do I leave a city I’ve come to know so well and love so dearly?
I think there is a part of me that fears normalcy. There is a part of me that views Duke as “pre-DukeEngage”, a place where I existed before this summer happened. We were warned at the DukeEngage Academy not to force our perception of the experience to be something “life-changing”, that the experience would be for each individual what it would be and that our impact on our community would be our primary output, not its impact on us. I’m not sure that the service itself was life changing. Sure, I learned a lot about how to handle myself in the workplace, and sure, I feel like I made a difference. What was life changing for me was what DukeEngage didn’t prepare me for. It was learning the stories of not only these fifteen other incredibly gifted individuals, but also many, many others who live outside the proverbial Duke “bubble”.
It was about walking through downtown, imagining myself with a wheelchair making an attempt to navigate intersections without curb cuts, without knowledge of more than a few English phrases. It was about identifying with someone the same age as me whose parents had kicked him out of the house for smoking marijuana when he was thirteen, and had been homeless for eight years already. Stories like these are difficult to come by on a beautiful campus in Durham, North Carolina, surrounded by incredibly gifted (and often incredibly privileged) college students who, through one avenue or another, have found their way to an incredible opportunity in their life.
It is not the academics, the athletics, the prestige, or even the campus that separates Duke. What makes Duke the most incredible university in the country are the ways in which it takes its resources and applies them to make real, engaging difference in the world. If I have played even the smallest part of forwarding this special University’s mission, I am both forever proud and forever better for it.
Dalton Brown
Duke Student '15