“Catullus sits in my soul.” I wrote that line in my journal nearly three years ago, as a first-year student at Bowdoin College. I was seventeen, away from home for the first time and longing for a kind of connection that college—at least at first—seemed unwilling to give. I was awkward, idealistic and profoundly alone. I had come to Bowdoin expecting to major in earth and oceanographic science. There was, in my mind, a vague possibility of environmental studies, maybe even physics.
