I loved the tree dearly. Its branches, heavy with the weight of decades, arced gracefully over the courtyard of Quincy House, tracing the sky with quiet elegance. Framed perfectly by my dorm room window, I would often watch its leaves dance in the sky, the shadows they cast shifting with the sun. Each morning of my junior year, my arboreal companion would greet me with its steadfast presence, offering a moment of stillness before the rush of the day. The night before my mid-semester departure from campus, with my suitcases packed by the door, I soaked in its proud figure one final time. This was the second instance in which I had to take a leave of absence from the College in as many years, in the wake of a seemingly endless cycle of family medical emergencies. The tree gave a parting wave as I closed the door, its great limbs swaying in farewell. When I finally returned, it was gone. Only a stump remained. Its absence felt like proof that time had passed, a reminder that things change even when you’re not there to witness it. The buildings were still there, unmoved by the seasons, and the Yard itself was covered in its usual raiment of snow and rain; but somehow, nothing felt quite the same. I was keenly reminded of Odysseus when he returns to Ithaca after years of war and wandering, only to find that his homeland feels foreign. “Alas, to the land of what mortals am I now come?” he asks, a stranger in his native land. I felt a similar disorientation.1
We often expect our undergraduate courses to shape our academic careers in profound ways, guiding us towards research, career goals, and achievement. But GENED 1074: The Ancient Greek Hero taught me something else–that a class can transform us personally as much as intellectually. As Professor Gregory “Just call me Greg!” Nagy guided us through the twists and turns of the Iliad and Odyssey, he taught us the term nostos–‘homecoming’–from which we derive the term ‘nostalgia.’ But nostos is not merely a physical return: it is also about confronting change. For Odysseus, the struggle is not simply to reclaim his home, but to reorient himself within a world that no longer matches the one he left behind. After twenty years of fighting at Troy and enduring hardships on his return voyage, he finds himself in a place he no longer recognizes: his estate has been overrun by foreign suitors imposing themselves upon his “widowed” wife Penelope, vying for her hand; his kingdom is thrown into hopeless disorder; and, perhaps most heartbreakingly, his son, Telemachus, whom he remembers as an infant, is now a young man coming into his departed father’s responsibilities. More profoundly, Odysseus becomes an outcast, unrecognizable in the rags of a beggar. This disguise is intentional, as Odysseus wishes to evaluate the loyalty of his family and household, but it reflects a deeper meaning: he has become a stranger not only to them, but to himself.
In returning to Harvard after my time away, I experienced a similar sense of identity crisis. The landmarks were unchanged, the paths still familiar, but I found myself confronting a world that no longer aligned with how I saw myself. I was not the overeager first-year who had entered her classes with far too much enthusiasm and ignorance; nor was I the slightly-less-ignorant junior who had been humbled by being exposed to the deep rivers of knowledge conferred by faculty and peers. On my first day back, I passed by a favorite study spot, a chair that I had spent countless hours in, but I could not recall the student who had hunched over her books and pens. She was a memory, made of smoke and shadow, and I felt little connection to her now. Reuniting with my professors and classmates was also daunting, and I felt very much like an imposter. When I visited my former advisor, a person who had shown me nothing but grace and compassion during my struggles at home, my hands shook when I went to open her office door. I was fully convinced that she would not know who I was, and even when she did, I felt that I had somehow pulled the wool over her eyes. Classes were no easier: most of my friends had graduated, and my fellow concentrators, as friendly and welcoming as they were, felt distant. Didn’t they sense that I was far from the person I had been, that all of the personal grief and interruptions to my undergraduate career now separated us like the vast Aegean?
When he returns to Ithaca, Odysseus is beset with a profound sense of loss. Everything dear to him, that he has dreamed of reclaiming for decades, is in disarray. His grief extends beyond the physical changes in his homeland; it is the emotional disconnect that strikes him most deeply. In Book 24, when he is reunited with his aged father, Laertes, he mourns not only the loss of time, but the changes that have left him estranged from the world he once knew. He laments how much his absence has altered everything, and how even his family is irrevocably transformed. I, too, faced disorienting anguish in my own return. Though my home had not changed in the same way, I had been altered by losses–some large, some small, some still unspoken–that left me divorced from the life I had once known. The grief I felt was not just for what I had lost, but for what had changed in ways I couldn’t control. But, like Odysseus, I came to find that in the gaps between who I was and who I had become, there was space for new understanding.
I spent many hours rereading the last book of the Odyssey as I recalled the lectures from Greg’s course. As I spent more time reflecting, I began to realize something profound. Though Odysseus’ return is marked by grief, it ultimately becomes a story of triumph. His longed-for homecoming is not the seamless reclamation of the past he might have imagined, but rather a reconnection with what truly matters. Odysseus finds fulfillment not in the world he once knew, but in his ability to adapt to what has changed. This epiphany–rooted in the idea that true return involves accepting, and eventually appreciating, the transformations that inevitably come with time–shifted my perspective on my own return to Harvard. Rather than viewing it as a confrontation with all I had lost, I began to understand that it was a reconnection with the parts of myself that had grown through experience.
The tree outside my window, once a steady companion, had been reduced to a stump, its absence a stark reminder of change. But even in its loss, it became a symbol of renewal. As I walked by it, I was strongly reminded of the orchard Odysseus encounters upon his return home, an orchard planted during his childhood. Now the trees are grown, bearing blossoming fruit, each a reminder of time passed and what has flourished in his absence. Odysseus, upon seeing the grove, remembers each tree, each variety of fruit, and reflects on how his labor has borne its own fruit over the years. The orchard, once a symbol of the past, has evolved into a living testament to the passage of time–a space where loss and growth coexist. Similarly, the space left behind in Quincy’s yard is not empty, but filled with the potential for new growth, new memories, and new delights.
GENED 1074 helped me understand that homecomings–in whatever forms they take–are not simply about returning to what we once knew, but about the emotional and psychological process of reorienting ourselves in a world that has shifted. Like our favorite Achaean trickster, I had to grapple with the reality that I was no longer the person I had been when I left, and in this shift, I found myself having to redefine my relationship to both the environment and my identity. The course provided a framework for understanding that true return is not about reclaiming what was lost, but about coming to terms with change–embracing both the new reality and the evolving self that has emerged in the process. It taught me that grief, though it marks an end, also plants the roots of new growth–where loss gives way to a deeper joy, and where what has passed becomes the soil for what will bloom.
1 Homer. Odyssey. Vol. 2, Books 13-24. Translated by A.T. Murrary, revised by George E. Dimock. Loeb Classical Library 105. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.