{mine.}
Sometimes (read: all the time), I think college is really just a holding pen created to give people my age a little extra time to get our shit together before we're allowed out into The Real World. It's almost like a day care where our parents dropped us off before The Real World is ready to pick us up, except now alcohol is involved and also, we can drive. College is like a little extra time to tire us out, so to speak, because The Real World doesn't really know what to do with us just yet. We're not quite ready to be productive members of society, but we're starting to figure out how to actually be a Grown Up.
And so, we wait. We wait for the inspiration to come to us, for something to click, for us to figure out what we're supposed to do next.
It doesn't always work for everyone. Some people spend their whole lives trying to figure out who they are and where they're going.
It's working for me.
I've almost got it figured out that there are some days when I can't have fun all day but have to sit down and do some real work. I've realized that I have to get a decent amount of sleep every night or I can't function the next day.
It's taken me a long time to admit it, but I don't want a job where I will have to wear a suit to work every day. I don't want to sit inside at a desk, I don't want to attend staff meetings, I don't want to do the 9-5 bullshit, and I really don't ever want someone to tell me what to do and when to do it. I
I haven't quite figured out what that leaves me with.
But I know I still have a semester left here at this daycare. I know I've still got a few more late nights and missed deadlines and good laughs and cram sessions left before The Real World drops by and asks if I'm ready to go yet. And, if I'm not, I know there's always grad school, which is maybe a little less like daycare and more like kindergarten, where I'm expected to know how to tie my shoes, but maybe I still need a little help remembering my home phone number. And there will be alcohol involved there too, and people will probably still expect me to show up to things hungover more often than not, and Grown Ups will tell me about how 'they remember those wild days when they were my age,' and maybe I'll finally figure out what it is I will do instead of just knowing what I don't want.
And, to me, that doesn't sound too bad. That sounds like something I can handle because my only other option is not knowing what I want but just doing what's expected of me by other people who don't really know me at all. And that sounds like the worst kind of time out ever.
I have told countless people that, for me, college taught me more about life and all the "life lessons" than it did anything else. Sure.. there were academics there and I did well and I even remember some of it.. but most of it was about all the big lessons in life and figuring out exactly who I was and what I thought about different issues as opposed to what I was always told to think about different issues. I left college a member of a different political party and with an entirely different set of beliefs then when I started college.
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