the ten years ago challenge

betsy's most recent blog entry gives her own answer to the question recently posed on her friend amber's blog--what were you doing ten years ago? along with her response, betsy threw down the gauntlet and asked who would follow her in taking up the challenge. so here i go...
in late winter 1996, i was in the middle of my sophomore year at knox college (old main, at right). as of yet undeclared, i hovered around philosophy, psychology and anthropology and realized that whatever certainty i had about a future career (some kind of writer...?) when i wrote my college application essays had completely disappeared. this didn't really make me nervous. actually, it was pretty exciting. i guess the teenage feeling (or reality?) of limitless possibility can hold on through nineteen. still, according to my journal, i was mentally drained by the end of winter term and happy to have a low-key spring break at home in chicago.
i lived in post hall, knox's women-only dorm, with my roommate hannah (sadly, ten years on, i have no idea what she's up to). we had lived together during our first year, too. she was from southern missouri, stood barely five feet tall, drove a VW fox, and loved music like i do (we had a radio show on WVKC). that year, i went to see fugazi at a fairgrounds in peoria, the big monet show at the art institute, dave matthews and tim reynolds at the adler in davenport, and ani difranco. like betsy, i also saw phish for the first time in october 1995 (were we at the same show? in madison? have we already discussed this at some point? hmmm...).
the residence halls at knox are set up as suites--bedrooms around a common living area--and our suite had an itinerant cat named skibbies (i found that in a journal--there's no way i would have remembered that name in a million years) who would come around and hang out sometimes. maybe college is the last time you can have a pet (of sorts) without any responsibility for it whatsoever?
almost exactly ten years ago, i started dating adam, the boyfriend i moved to iowa city with after graduation in 1998. he was living in his frat house and had just come back to galesburg from a term at the newberry library in chicago. we had become good friends during the spring of my first year, then on new year's eve 1996, he broke up with the woman he'd been dating since we met, and things kind of went from there.

looking back at things i did, thought and felt a decade ago has been a strange experience. i don't really have any photos of myself from ten years back, hence no old pics with this post. i had a 35mm camera that i later lost on a park bench in dublin, but i didn't take it out much. flipping through letters, ticket stubs, notes, and postcards brought back a lot of vivid, funny and touching memories. going through my journal, though, was more like reading someone else's words than my own--unsettling, but also reassuring. i'm not the girl i was then, and thank goodness. she was great at 19, but at 29, i think she'd be a bit of a mess.
here's to ten years of beginnings and endings, learning and change...

now, who else will take up the challenge?