When I was 20 years old, the summer after my junior year of college, I interned in Washington, D.C., at The Student Press Law Center, a nonprofit that works to protect press freedom for high school and college journalists.
I learned a lot about First Amendment law. I learned a lot about public transportation. I learned that people who aren’t from the Midwest (the other interns) make fun of people who are from the Midwest (me) for saying “You wanna come with?” (“Come with who.
..” It was a whole thing.
) I learned to start taking mental notes about what I wanted my one precious life to include. One night a few of the interns went to see Sarah McLachlan perform at Merriweather Post Pavilion, an amphitheater in Columbia, Maryland, where we sat on the lawn and sang our melodramatic hearts out and one of the law student interns cried because she was recovering from a tough breakup and I thought: This. This is the stuff I want in my life.
Crowds. Music. Starry nights.
Friends. People I can laugh with and sing with, but also people I can cry with because that probably means we’re telling each other the truth and sometimes the truth makes you cry. Other stuff would fill in the margins eventually, I figured.
But those things sounded like a good core. This month, 29 summers later, I went to see Sarah McLachlan perform at Huntington Bank Pavilion, an amphitheater on Chicago’s Northerly Island, where eight friends and I sat on folding chairs and sang our melodramatic hearts o.
