Two years.

 I think I'd do almost anything to be able to relive my Jerusalem Center experience as the person I am now, but at the same time I know I wouldn't be where I am today if I had not gone when I had.

I came to the JC as a disillusioned eighteen-year-old who had just finished her freshman year in college. I came searching for intellectual stimulation and new experiences in a world where it felt like I'd already done everything, a world for which I had such high expectations but which consistently delivered disappointment. I had wanted the world from college; I came bright-eyed, question-filled, and ready to blossom, but felt cheated by my experience. Two semesters of eighteen-plus credits, packed to the brim with chemistries and calculus and senior-level microbiology courses for which I had completed none of the prerequisites had proved mind-numbingly easy, not to mention impersonal, and I applied to Jerusalem to enhance my already-pristine medical school resume and to try something else--anything else.

You should know I loved my time in Jerusalem. I said I'd never been happier, and I still think that's true. But we detect happiness in an overwhelmingly general assay, and there were plenty of things I did to damage my own experience.

I didn't think about the social aspect when I applied; to me, such an issue has always been irrelevant. But in such an airtight, inbred community, where all we had (and all we were allowed to have) was each other, the social scene soon became all I could think about. If anything the situation became a dystopic experiment: What happens when 79 college students interact with no one else for four straight months?

It's painful to reread my journal and hear so much about interpersonal relations in my group and so little real information about once-in-a-lifetime visits to time-immemorial places. I remember becoming so caught up in who liked me and who didn't that I cared more about where and with whom I sat on the bus than our destination. I remember doing things that contradict my nature in order to (try to) win someone else's approval, and I remember being hurt by the pettiness and immaturity of others along the way. There was one chick in particular who always bragged about loving everyone while making her distaste for me very obvious (the hypocrisy bothered me way more than the dislike). Her blog (which I still follow as a Jerusalem relic; I don't think she knows) actually gives me my very favorite external description of myself from that time period. I think it's supposed to be negative, and I think that's why I like it so much.

I am hesitant to blame such social obsession on my relative youth. I was the youngest girl on my program, but definitely not among the least mature. I think my attitude and that of the similarly obsessed people around me stemmed mainly from living in a social vacuum; if no one else in the vacuum likes you then you are alone, and in Jerusalem you can't be alone, because if you are you are consigned to isolation from the city and the experience, as you can't leave the building without at least two colleagues, not to mention the fact that you don't want to be alone in your pictures (which I don't understand now, and I really regret not having more pictures of just me) which you are sending home to friends and family so everyone will think you are happy and socially well-adjusted.

I should have been happy with the friendships that came automatically, however few in number, and I shouldn't have cared so much about the image I wanted others to have of me. I should have lost myself in the experience and the schoolwork (which I did to an extent) and the learning of it all rather than worry about being liked. I should have listened more closely to the guides and professors and sat where I could take down their every word rather than hang out near the back so people would notice I was trying to be "cool" or whatever it is you try to be when you'd rather talk about nothing than listen about something. I should have documented my experience more thoroughly, giving precedence to things that actually mattered.

But if I had not gone to Jerusalem as the person I was, I would not be the person I am now. I made a few lasting friendships that have been huge blessings in my life. I learned to live in a land of divisions, to respect Judaism and Islam and their adherents equally. I learned that I do not hate international politics. I learned how to love new foods and how to fall in love with a city and an ideal. But most significantly, I found Arabic, which has gradually wrested control of my schedule from the sciences and radically altered the direction of my future and career. I can't ask to go back. I would have to live it the same way, with all my imperfections, to receive the benefits I now enjoy. But I would like to have the same experience again at this point in my life. Extrinsically, the emotionally balanced Arabic scholar would glean more from her experiences in Jerusalem than the self-confused teenager. However, that's not a choice I have the power to make, and for that I am infinitely grateful.