Raised in sunny Florida, I now find myself waking to the dreary winter days of New York. My alarm buzzes once, I say to myself its time to go but as I look out the window I can’t help but close my eyes. Before I know it, it’s buzzing again, that thing that is trying to get me going and start my day. This time, with more conviction, I hop out of bed and start my daily routine. I get dressed, grab a bite, and head to the trains. Its cold outside, but manageable; before I know it, I am on the train. I squeeze in, next to all sorts of people trying to make their way downtown. People are screaming, yawning, reading, and sneezing, but we are all huddled in together, rich and poor, everyone has their own daily routine that starts here. Finally after three transfers I am almost there, just a few more blocks and I will have finally arrived. I look around as I walk this final stretch. It’s a sea of people rushing on with their lives. No one, including myself, takes a minute to appreciate the park we all pass, the buildings hanging over our heads, or the beautiful faces we have just passed. It is all about moving forward towards the goal.

As I read Whitman’s Song of Myself, I see a struggle for his clear identity. In section 16 he discusses how he sees himself, and how he is “Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine…” (Section 16). He is both everything and nothing all at the same time. He continues to say “I resist any thing better than my own diversity, Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place” (Section 16). His lack of clarity gives him solace, because with it he finds himself in his “place”. As I enter the doors of Baruch, I am both a student and a teacher, a child and a man, a Floridian and a New Yorker, and most of all, in my “place” that gives me solace, and allows me to be me.