Darden Diaries 8: It was “Fall”ing and its all fallen!

Amber, beige, bister, chestnut, khaki, tan, fawn, sepia, ocher, ginger, rust, puce, chocolate, hazel…

Before you think I am rattling off a list from the paints section of a home improvement store, think twice. Words fail me when I try to define all the color I see around me. There are colors I see now a days, words for which are not yet created I feel. 

When you are living in a place that looks like it’s right out of a picture post card (or a windows desktop screen), it’s hard not to get poetic. Every day you stop in the middle of it all to take a few seconds and take in the sweet air that surrounds you. Some days are mad and you don’t notice a thing around you. But other days, when you have a lot on your mind, you get philosophical about life and wonder why you made the decision to put yourself through this ordeal, you stop in your tracks and look around you and try to take it all in.

Despite the madness of 8 am classes, seemingly endless recruiting, mounting case load, learning team meetings, dropping temperatures, and the recovery from the Term 2 exams, there was something that had been slowly changing…the color of the leaves. And before you could appreciate that, they suddenly started falling.

As I walk back and forth every day from the apartment to the grounds, walk back sometimes because I would forget the folder which has all my day’s cases stacked in, or walk back again to get my nametag because there is a company briefing that I don’t want to be nameless for, or walk back because I forgot my laptop charger, I realized that I had lived two seasons here already! Each day more and more of the Darden edifice is visible from my apartment. More and more leaves are strewn on the ground.

I didn’t realize how time flew by. With every minute so precious here at Darden, you want to be as productive as you can. Saving a few minutes everywhere by eating while walking, talking while reading, listening while thinking, doubting while answering, solving while complicating.

But once in a while I stop in my track to do nothing. Just stand there with my backpack loaded with cases crying out to be solved, emails emerging out to be answered and endless phone calls waiting to be returned. All I do is stay still with everything that is changing around me. And before I realize it, it starts sleeting.