A note on college (and I suppose life in general):
Time flies. Looking into the past 5 years of my life I feel
a renewed sense of wonder at how I have gotten to where I am today. 5 years ago
I was a senior in high school, where the majority of my time and energy was
spent in the high school theatre and music departments. My main concern in life
was my boyfriend, Alex, and after that I spent the remainder of my energy on
friends from school. To this day, of all of those people, I am only close with
one of my friends of high school. Of all the people I knew and took classes
with, who I performed with in choir and theatre, of all the people that I grew
up going to elementary and middle school with, I can honestly say that I have
not kept track of more than a dozen, most likely not even that many. I was
looking at pictures from Honors Society, Theatre, Choir, Graduation, and I
realized that I don’t know what has become of any of those people really. They
could all be married, or have children, or be gay activists for all I know.
They could be anything. They are not the people that I knew in high school. And
as I realized this, I thought, “well, I’m not the person I was in high school.”
As this realization dawned on me, I also started to take stock of my last four
years in college- what made me change so much? Am I better for it? Is there
anything that I regret?
The truth is college required more of me than I knew was
inside of me. My experiences there, the challenges that I faced, the mistakes
that I made, taught me valuable lessons. College taught me how to study- not
just for classes, but how to study behaviors and people. I learned to observe
personalities, learned how to deal with different kinds of people. College
taught me about trust, about how to trust your partner, how to trust yourself.
College taught me the importance of family. Before I left home I had no idea
how special my family was. They are crazy, and they drive me crazy oftentimes,
but there is no other family like them, and no one else can ever understand who
I am without first understanding where I come from- my family. College taught
me independence, true responsibility. Suddenly, no one was there to tell me yes
or no, to tell me it was time to quit, to remind me of this or that. I went to
college, and I had to learn how to take care of myself in totality. This was
probably one of the hardest lessons for me to learn. I wanted independence in a
conceptual form; however, I was also afraid that independence meant being
alone. I had to overcome that fear the hard way; by being turned out on my nose
and having to pick up the pieces of a shattered dream. College taught me about
living.
Today, I am 22 living in Hawaii. I have traveled across 3
continents, been to 7 different countries, living in Africa for 4.5 months, and
I have had the opportunity to skydive, visit many National Parks, learn to ski,
and have my writing published- all through my college education. If you had
told my 17 year old self that I would, in the next 5 years, have done all of
the things listed above I probably would have laughed in your face. At 17 I was
planning on studying music education at Shepherd University, marrying my high
school sweetheart, and having children before I was 25. Now, less than 3 years
from that age, I have a bachelor’s degree from Fairmont State University in
theatre arts; I am single and planning to start my graduate studies soon. I
have no intention whatsoever of having children anytime soon, and no desire to
be tied down by a relationship. When I used to imagine my life some 40 years
from now, I used to see something very similar to my own parents’ existence. I
thought I would be a grandmother, spending all of her time and energy spoiling
her grandkids and taking up such hobbies as knitting and cross-stitchery to
fill the time. My life now seems infinitely fuller and more interesting that I
could have imagined. Imagining myself 40 years down the road there is a sense
of exhilaration thinking of all I could accomplish in that time and all the
skills I will have acquired, plus all of the things that I could try out still.
I want to learn all sorts of languages, and travel all over the globe doing
interesting work and learning about all sorts of cultures. I want to hike
Everest, swim with sharks and dolphins, ride on elephants, chill out with some
kangaroos, maybe own a pet monkey. Now I want to explore all the edges of this
world and soak in all the adventure and experience I can manage.
I realize now that this has always been the case. These
things are not new dreams or desires. These are all those, once impossible,
dreams that I have dreamed my whole life. It is the culmination of years of watching
and envying others who get out and do amazing things. It is the result of a
lifetime of suppressing my inner adventurer, my truest self. These are my
dreams, crazy, silly, maybe childish, possibly dangerous or expensive or
difficult, but they are the shimmering things that I have held out of my own
grasp all my life. Now, as I enter a new chapter of my life, a new era as it
were, I am finally allowing myself the extreme pleasure of really going for my
wildest dreams. Every time that I am daunted, and I think that I can’t possibly
or, there’s just not time for it all, or I’ll have to make some big sacrifices
for all this, that’s when I stop myself and say- “I have the rest of my life to
accomplish any and every dream I can dream up. That’s 60 good years. And if I
don’t do it, if I let them go, then those 60 years will pass me up, and I will
find myself sitting back and wondering what in the world I spent all that time
doing if not realizing my dreams.” I was to seize the day, every single day,
carpe dium, and I want to “suck the marrow out of life.” I want so much more
than a conventional life. I want to look at my life as I lay dying- no matter
when that day comes- and be able to say “now THAT was living.”
