The Colleges That Taught Me Without Walls

What colleges have you attended?

The question arrives
on a paper thin as winter skin,
ink smelling faintly of rules and corridors.

What colleges have you attended?

I pause,
pen hovering like a migratory bird
unsure where to land,
because the answer does not fit
into boxes designed for buildings and dates.

I have attended
the college of early mornings
where the sun taught me
that light arrives
even when the world is unprepared.

Its campus was a narrow balcony,
a kettle singing its small hymn,
sparrows arguing over yesterday’s crumbs.
The syllabus was simple:
wake, notice, breathe.
Exams were unannounced.

I have attended
the college of falling leaves,
where autumn was a strict but gentle professor,
teaching impermanence
without footnotes.

Each leaf was a thesis
written in rust and gold,
each letting go
a final defense.
I failed often,
clutching what wanted to fall,
but the trees never mocked me.

They simply stood,
unburdened,
their empty branches
pointing toward a larger sky.

I studied briefly
at the college of silence.
Admission was sudden.

No banners.
No orientation week.
Just a room emptied by loss,
chairs holding the shape of absence,
air thick with unsaid sentences.

Here, silence taught me
how loud the heart can become
when nothing interrupts it.
Here, I learned that grief
is not a collapse
but a deepening,
a widening of the chest
to hold what cannot be fixed.

The faculty was invisible,
but thorough.

I have attended
the college of unfinished conversations,
where words arrive late,
miss their moment,
and circle back years later
while washing dishes
or staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m.

The lectures were held
in memory’s long corridors,
echoing with voices
that now live only as weather.
The grading was harsh:
clarity always arrived
after the semester ended.

For a while,
I enrolled in the college of ambition.

Its buildings were tall,
made of mirrors and deadlines.
Everyone walked quickly,
carrying resumes like passports.

The curriculum praised speed,
celebrated exhaustion,
treated rest as a luxury elective.
I learned how to measure myself
against others,
how to mistake motion for meaning.

I graduated with honors in anxiety
and a minor in forgetting
why I began.

Later, quietly,
I withdrew.

I have attended
the college of night skies,
where the classroom had no walls.

Stars were scattered notes
left behind by ancient minds.
I learned that some light
travels millions of years
just to reach my eyes
on an ordinary evening.

This changed something in me.

Assignments became smaller,
more tender.
If the universe could be patient
on that scale,
surely I could sit
with a single unanswered question
without panic.

I have attended
the college of the body.

Its lessons were blunt.
Pain did not speak in metaphors.
Fatigue did not negotiate.
The body taught me limits
with the honesty of gravity.

Here, I learned that strength
is not endless,
that care is not weakness,
that listening inward
is a form of intelligence
no institution can certify.

I have attended
the college of love,
and its many departments.

Introduction to Longing.
Advanced Attachment.
Special Topics in Letting Go.

This college burned and healed me
in equal measure.
It taught me how easily
we hand our maps
to another human,
how devastating it feels
to get them back,
creased and incomplete.

Yet it also taught me
how love enlarges the inner landscape,
how it opens rooms
I did not know existed,
how even endings
leave behind windows.

I have attended
the college of roads.

Bus seats. Train platforms.
Dust on shoes.
Each journey a pop quiz
in patience and trust.

The road taught me
that movement is a teacher,
that horizons shift
when you do,
that arrival is less important
than how attentively you travel.

I have attended
the college of failure,
more times than I can count.

It was the most honest school.
No illusions.
No applause.

Failure taught me
where my armor cracked,
where my pride outweighed my wisdom.
It taught me humility
not as humiliation
but as grounding,
like roots learning
how deep they must go
to survive a storm.

I have attended
the college of small joys.

This one had no degrees.
Only moments.

Warm tea in cold hands.
A book opening like a door.
Rain tapping gently on tin.
A stranger’s kindness
offered without witness.

These lessons were brief
but lasting,
the kind that settle into the marrow
and quietly change
how you stand in the world.

And somewhere along the way,
almost without noticing,
I enrolled in
the college of unknowing.

Here, questions mattered more than answers.
Certainty was optional.
Wonder was mandatory.

I learned that not knowing
is not a failure of intelligence
but a sign of depth,
that mystery is not a gap
to be filled
but a space
to be honored.

Now, when the question returns—
What colleges have you attended?—

I smile inwardly.

How do I explain
that my education
was scattered across seasons,
etched into skin and sky,
taught by time,
loss,
love,
and the quiet persistence of stars?

How do I compress
a life of learning
into lines meant for institutions?

So I answer carefully,
knowing the real transcript
is written elsewhere—

in the way I pause
before speaking,
in how gently I hold another’s sorrow,
in my growing comfort
with vastness,
with not being the center,
with being a brief, luminous student
in a universe
that never stops teaching.