In My Element: A Love Letter
Where on campus am I most “in my element”? I love this question, but as I thought about it, I couldn’t help but feel just a little sad; I’m writing this from my childhood bedroom and while I love home, it’s just not the same as Ann Arbor, and I truly miss it. Of the list of buildings and places that I miss the most (the Ross winter garden, the 4th floor of Blau, the UMMA, the couch in my apartment, the Hatcher reading room, the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room), the place I miss the most of all is Espresso Royale on State Street.
Ever since I was in high school, I had this silly little dream that I wanted to become a regular at a coffee shop, where they know my order, where I feel like a true local, where I would spend my mornings doing “important things”, whatever that is supposed to mean. Espresso became that place for me. The baristas know my order (a medium mocha, no whip, with an extra shot of espresso), and they chide me for always forgetting my punch card and my reusable coffee mug (I’m working on it, I promise). I get there early in the morning, around 6:45, right after they open. But, somehow, I’m never the first person there. I always sit at the same table, the second to last in the back on the right side near the outlets, and I always sit facing the doors. I put in headphones, drink my coffee, and I get a little work done. The baristas walk by, always smiling at me, and I smile back. I’ll stay until 9:00 or 9:30, when I leave to start my day, and I watch as the shop slowly fills around me with more and more people. It’s the perfect, warmest, coziest start to my day – and it’s in that comfort that I’ve done some of my best work.
It was there in that element that I prepped for junior year recruiting; tapping into the most authentic story-telling veins I had, I wrote out my STAR stories and my “why this company” answers. It was there that I prepped the scripts and slides for my TEDx events. It was there that I wrote some of my best essays and fiction pieces. I would save the important stuff, the things that I needed to really focus for and have a fresh mind to tackle, for those morning Espresso hours. And for those hours, surrounded first by silence and then by sounds of coffee-making, I feel the most authentic, the most connected to myself and the most calm. It’s the fresh beginning of a new morning, the allure of being in a coffee shop surrounded by strangers who are studying for the latest exam, holding their latest business meeting, catching up with friends. Everything I did there felt important and yet, felt put into perspective. Everything I was doing, and everything I will do is just another piece of the greater collective narrative.
Definitely, that coffee shop is what I miss the most about my home away from home. I can’t wait until we return and I find my element there again, at that table and in that mocha.