TKC Letters Project

To those who haven’t changed me,

Three hours and forty-two minutes. That’s it. A nobody from nowhere is about to become the somebody, someone from somewhere will see as a single digit of the eight-million four hundred and sixty-two thousand people of New York City.

It’s a big wide world we live in, and it only seems to grow bigger the longer we’re here. That terrifies me. Today is redundantly chasing tomorrow as yesterday knocks at my door. Compared to the vastness of the world, my touch is a cigarette in a war.

Here I find myself in a city full of people. I can't help but lose myself in the sea of faces ill see today and forget tomorrow. Is that all I am? Am I any more than a brushstroke in the painting of a world I feel no right to live in?

These are the thoughts of a college freshman in a terrifyingly big world struggling to discover if his tooth belongs in society's gear. These are the fears of a human being struggling to realize his impact on an evergrowing world.

This school has shaped who I am becoming. I am no longer a statistic. I am part of a greater community. They have shown me how to see and feel the change I represent amongst the people and institutions I interact with. King’s hasn’t turned me into a new person. It has merely shown me who I have always been. No matter how much I convinced myself I wasn’t a living, breathing, functioning character in my story—I have always been who I am today. King’s revealed myself to me. For that, I will be forever grateful.

Somewhere, out there, is a no one to no one and a someone to everyone except themselves. I can only hope that they will come to know who they are under all their self-loathing. However, without the support of an institution like King’s, I fear they may never have the opportunity. Nothing scares me more than that. I know where I would have taken myself—I wish that upon nobody.

My small touch is larger than I imagined.