On Jan. 18, 2026, I stepped foot on Keene State concrete for the first time in over a year. My first thought: It was much colder here in New England than it was in the Kansai region of Japan.
My second thought: Nothing seemed to have changed since I left in December 2024.
My third thought, after twenty minutes of dragging suitcases and boxes up the narrow stairs of Owl’s Nest 5, cursing the necessity of clothes, books and bedding, was that I was glad to be back. This last thought surprised me.
When I first moved into a Keene State College dorm in January of 2023, I mainly thought of the school as a spur-of-the-moment decision made at the very last minute. I did not have any strong desire to study here specifically, and really only chose the college due to a combination of timing, finances and the availability of my desired major of English literature. The fact that they had an abroad program in Japan was also of interest to me.
However, looking back on the decision now, I realize that there were a variety of small factors and incidents that ultimately led to me accepting that offer of admission three years ago.
I graduated from high school in 2021. Since middle school, I had been looking toward the future with the intention of attending college for instrumental performance, specializing in the bassoon. The Manhattan School of Music was an idea that was floated by me more than once by my private instructor. For most of my teen years, l dedicated my free time to practicing, rehearsing, attending lessons, making reeds and performing in concerts.
However, by the end of the second semester in my junior year, I had become unsure about a life of musicianship. That December, I was supposed to audition for a seat in the New England Music Festival. I had just earned first chair in both the District and All State level festivals in the fall, so expectations were high for me to do well. I should have been motivated to continue succeeding in an art I had been practicing since I was ten. Yet every time I sat down in front of a music stand, instrument in hand, I could do nothing but stare at the sheet music–maybe honk out a few scales if I was lucky. It might have been the pressure to succeed, or perhaps it was the prospect of spending the rest of my life chasing perfection I would never truly achieve. Maybe a combination of both. Whatever the reason was, I had completely lost my passion.
I ended up missing that audition, and by the time COVID-19 rolled around in spring I had more or less stopped practicing entirely. When schools closed in March, I knew that my future as a musician was dead. Even before that audition in December, I had been finding it harder and harder to sit down and practice with enjoyment. I burned myself out with too many performances and too much stress.
I ended up not going to college immediately after high school, as I was no longer sure what I wanted to study. My falling out with music and my parents’ divorce in the spring before graduation left me feeling pretty apathetic about life in general, and I did not want to waste time and money pursuing a degree I was not one hundred percent sure of.
I spent most of my free time during the next year and a half reading, something I had not done for leisure since starting high school. I loved to read growing up, but the business of my schedule and my general dispirited disposition during my teen years led me to drop the pastime. Hours previously spent sequestered away in other worlds turned into hours spent doing schoolwork and drilling études until I had somewhat forgotten my identity as a reader. Yet now that my only responsibilities were to show up to work and clean up after myself at my father’s house, I had plenty of time and energy to delve into the works of Salinger, Wilde, Dostoevsky and any other author that struck my fancy.
Sitting in my dimly lit basement bedroom while in the middle of Donna Tart’s “The Secret History” in September 2022, I realized that I was finding the same enjoyment in reading that I had once found in music. Immediately, without even really thinking about it, I got up from the futon, sat down at my desk, logged into Common App and started applying to several colleges to begin studying English literature in the fall of 2023–though not yet to KSC.
Even though I did not apply to KSC initially, I was aware of its existence. I have lived in New Hampshire my whole life in the small town of Bath, which is about two hours north of Keene. While I was a senior in high school, after I had given up on attending school for music, my father took me to see a few of the schools in the state. At that point, I wanted to study farther away from home, so I was not very interested in attending college in New Hampshire. I only paid partial attention to my surroundings when we wandered around the college grounds.
On a weekend afternoon, during the college’s spring break, we made the drive down to KSC to check out the campus. I do not remember much from this visit, though one scene still lingers in my memory. The snow had recently melted and the green of the quad’s fresh grass was spring-damp. A triangle of students was lazily tossing a Frisbee among themselves, taking care not to slip. Even though I had no intention of attending KSC at the time of this visit, I was taken with this image of students spending their downtime together. It gave me the impression that this was an environment that encouraged companionship.
This faint memory was enough to get me to reconsider KSC while waiting on college admissions results in December 2022. I had to reconsider my plans. When my parents got divorced in the spring of 2021, I initially stayed with my mother until she had me move in with my father the following January. That fall, I moved in with my maternal grandparents, where I planned to live until starting school the following year. However, it became clear that they were going to be unable to house me until then, and I was not entirely sure where I was going to live until starting college.
Since I had been thinking of attending college soon anyway, I decided to apply at the last minute to KSC and one other school to start spring 2023, as they both still had admissions open. I ended up choosing KSC as they gave me more financial aid and I was familiar with the campus due to the visit during high school. The literature courses offered also appealed to me. I was interested in taking my knowledge of literature to the next level by studying theory and the history of literary writing, and the school’s program met those desires. The final factor in my choice was the possible opportunity of studying abroad by participating in KSC’s study away program.
While researching the school before applying, I happened across a section of the college’s website titled “Study Away Programs.” Having only been out of the United States twice, both times to Quebec, Canada, the potential of spending months fully immersed in another country’s landscape, language and culture captured my attention.
I was particularly intrigued by KSC’s partnership with Kansai Gaidai University in Japan.
I took Japanese as my second language in high school, partly because it was considered the most advanced language option and partly because I grew up playing
Nintendo games, and I had always wanted to visit the country but had never had the opportunity to.
Since graduating, I have looked back on my time spent in Japanese class practicing core conversations and kanji as a highlight of those turbulent years, and I was excited by the prospect of getting to continue learning the language in its country of origin.
Admittedly, KSC was not my first choice of school, and I had really wanted to study farther away from home. In choosing KSC, I reasoned that even if I really did not like it here, I could probably get away with spending a semester or two off campus by going abroad. Now, instead of feeling listless about applying, I was mentally planning an itinerary of famous sites I wanted to see when I studied in Japan. This was the ultimate push in getting me to send in my application that December.
Three winters and two semesters abroad later, with a desk stacked with works of literature and a phone full of pictures of Kansai, I gazed out the window of my Owl’s Nest dorm at snow-covered Appian Way. Ready to begin my final year at Keene State College, I had my fourth thought: I made the right decision three years ago.
Harmony Evans can be contacted at
