The Life that Late I Led

I ran into Bed Bath & Beyond on Sunday because I was in desperate need of a very glamorous item: a new shower curtain liner. I thought I would just pop in and pop out and soon be on my way to a mildew free showering experience. But when I got in there, it was a zoo. There seemed to be people and shopping carts every which way I turned and I was wondering what could be the cause of the cart gridlock that had me pinned for a good five minutes between the George Foreman Grills and the panini makers.

There were girls carefully examining various bedspreads while their mothers advised holding shower caddies and extra long twin sheets. There were carts filled with yaffa blocks (the DNA of dorm life) and gleaming hotpots that had yet to see their first ramen noodle. I soon recognized the familiar scene, realizing once again it is time to send the newest crop of college freshman off to school. Standing there in BB&B I was filled with a longing for my own college days and at that moment I would have traded in my plastic liner, the apartment that goes with it, and my whole adult life for a bunk bed, a few syllabi, a shelf full of tomes marked USED, and an email address that ends in .edu.

This is ironic, because in my eighteenth summer I was completely terrified and dreading the commencement of my career as an undergrad. The way my mother tells it, I did not speak for the entire eight hour car ride from New Jersey to Virginia. And I can actually picture myself sitting in the backseat gazing out the window with sad eyes thinking of the glory of my recently ended high school days. I was listening to the mix tape my friend Tara had made me for the journey and it was filled with songs such as Natalie Merchant's “These are the Days” and of course our senior prom theme “These are the Times to Remember.”

My parents chattered excitedly from the front seat. My dad mapped out a faster route they could use when they came back down for Family Weekend and poured over the course catalogue picking out classes I should take and yelling out names excitedly like “Mathematics of Flight!” to which my Mom would say something like “I wish they offered that when I was in school. That sounds so interesting. Don’t you think so sweetie?”

But I was concentrating too hard on sulking to reply. “What fools these parents of mine are,” I thought leaning on the purple yaffa in the seat next to me. “They don’t realize that I have left the best friends and times of my life behind me. But I will show them the error of their ways when I am absolutely miserable in college and then they will be sorry for making me seek out higher education.” Meanwhile Billy Joel sang to me “These are the times to remember and they will not last forever.” “So, true Billy,” I sighed to myself as a tear welled, “so true.”

Cut to me little more than a month later. I am out to dinner with my parents on Family Weekend. They barely got a word in edgewise as I gushed about my friends and classes and dorm escapades and wondered aloud how I was going to be able to stand being home for a whole boring month with only the two of them during my holiday break.

What does this tell me? Well certainly that my stupidity at eighteen was only matched by my ingratitude and my unbelievable sense of entitlement-but also that my nostalgia for college now is most likely just as misplaced as my longing for high school was when I sat moping in that backseat. Here is the thing, don’t tell anyone, but I really like the working world. While there are things I miss about college, there are also things I am glad I don’t have to contend with anymore. Here is a short list: I like being able to watch mindless TV or go see a movie on a Sunday night. I like to read whatever I want instead of what is required. I like working closely with people, the people in my office and the people that my company works with. I also like interacting with and regularly meeting persons who are not all my age and have not had the same exact life experience as me. I like earning a paycheck. I do miss the academics, but while I loved learning through lecture and reading, now I have come to value learning by doing. And last but certainly not least, I like that I don’t have to wear flip flops in the shower to avoid contracting a toe fungus.

So what it is it every fall that makes me wish even if for just a moment that I was crossing the quad again instead of the street? I think it comes down to this: I miss the security of being within a system. When I was in school the path and the goal were clear and my progress was clearly measured by midterms and finals and punctuated by semesters and summer breaks. The goal for the first twenty-two years of my life was do well in school and graduate. Post-college life is simply more nebulous. Now if I want a goal I have to create that goal and path to it all by myself. This takes a lot of initiative and sustained energy to both pursue a goal and question the whole time whether it is the right one. Plus, whether I succeed or fail or if I am on the right path at all might not be evident after four months, or even four years.

In college the opportunities seemed as plentiful as the acapella groups. But this is not so in real life (which in regard to the latter may be a good thing depending on who you are talking to). Opportunity knocked everyday and some days I’d get up and open the door and others I’d roll over and hit the snooze button, because I knew the next day there would be another speaker to go hear, another famous visiting professor offering a course, or another organization that needed members. But outside of school you have to seek out these things, keep putting yourself out there, and follow through-and that makes them inherently more valuable. You know you’ll make more of an opportunity you’ve earned than one that is handed to you, and opportunities are only worth what you make of them.

And while every decision now is not only second guessed, but third or fourth guessed because its possible future ramifications are unknown, every success is worth more to me too. Call me Mary Tyler Moore and excuse me while I throw my jaunty beret up in the air, but even little successes tend to give me a “your going to make it after all” exhilaration that I never had before.

Of course all this gushing about being a worker bee doesn’t mean that I won’t go home tonight, call one of my college friends to reminisce, cook myself up some ramen noodles, and take a shower with my flip flops on just for old times sake.