Rebranding and Other Things

I am now over halfway done with my last spring semester at Cornell University. I am also nearly halfway done with my final year at Cornell University. To even think about leaving is insane; I love the place. It has broken me, surely, but it was a good time. I figured out important things for myself and got to cheer on the big red hockey team while I did it, too. I saw many slope sunsets, multiple Slope Days, and was a member of various extracurriculars. I cherish the memories I have with Rainy Day and I am working to put it back in a good place. Marginalia Review has been wonderful, as well. Logos has always been a blast. The Cornell Daily Sun allowed me to stretch my wings in an area that I was not as familiar with. The Cornell Review has also helped me in this fashion, pushing me to become more active in my greater community. I have even been an active member of The California Review at Berkeley, publishing a couple of articles and attending meetings virtually. How could I forget the Big Red Marching Band and Big Red Pep Band! Playing the baritone sax has never been so fun. While I did not get to do a senior thesis, and while my final semester isn’t exactly going to be super fun (or at least that is what I am envisioning), I am on the right track. I did get to experience life as a scientist, and I figured it was just not right for me. There were a lot of reasons, but the main one was that I simply couldn’t eat, drink, and breathe physics 24/7. My coding skills also were not up to par. There are plenty of talented students at my university who will do things greater than I probably could have done. I will let them manifest their destiny, but in the meantime, I have some of my own destiny to meet.

I have been apart from the country that birthed me for over 15 years. I was born in Lausanne and raised in Puidoux, Switzerland. The first five years of my life, I was introduced to the best of life that life had to offer me, which included a booming family and a beautiful home. Ever since then, I had made it a goal of mine to return. That was my one life goal, was to make it back. I think that I will feel some sort of peace, but I am unsure. I almost made it back a year ago. I got accepted into a study abroad program at CERN with Boston University. Ultimately, I felt as though I was not in a good place academically to go overseas and do a semester in a foreign language while pursuing research at CERN. That was probably for the best. However, I am getting my opportunity this year. I will be in Switzerland May 25 through May 27 of 2025 and for the first time in a long time, I will sit by the lake and feel at home. This will be, undoubtedly, one of the most critical, one of the most crucial moments of my entire life. Switzerland is a major aspect of who I am. It is the plot around which my life revolves. Touching down in Geneva will be like ascending to Heaven. And speaking of Heaven, let it be known that when I die, I want to be buried, not cremated, and placed under the tree with the swing in the yard of the second house we had in Puidoux. If this is not possible, then I beg of those managing my burial, find somewhere around Lausanne, Vevey, Puidoux, Montreux, that will hold my body.

I apologize for the slightly existential and negative mood now, but I did want to make sure that was written down somewhere. You never know what could happen. Change is always right around the corner.

I have been writing as C. Walker since I was a freshman in high school. It was, quite frankly, a dumb pseudonym. It was just the first initial of my first name and my middle name. It is almost too short. There is no need to initialize my first name and there is no reason to hide my name. En lieu of Dylan Thomas, with his two word, two syllable name, with all its catchiness, I am rebranding to my first and middle name: Caidan Walker. I think it has a nice ring to it.

2025 is definitely my year. I will return to Switzerland at last, and I will graduate from the university that I spent all of my high school years fighting so hard to get into. Hopefully, I will also get into an MFA program, but that is a matter for 2026.

Caidan Walker