[The Column] College will someday feel like high school
April 29th, 2009 by Dave Studinski“OK – I Understand,” the body of the e-mail says.
“GA Position?” the subject line reads, dated 11:15 a.m. June 19, 2007. It’s another response in an e-mail thread that brought me back to Ball State University for graduate education and two years of college life I never had as an undergraduate.
Of all message threads to end up randomly appearing on my Blackberry, it would be this one. There’s no logical explanation for why the message appears in my phone’s inbox. Some wicked twist of fate and timing is my best guess. In a peculiar coincidence I’m noticing it just minutes after returning home from our department’s end-of-year graduate student reception.
Tracing through the thread, I flash back to the original period of correspondence. I was interning in Boston, debating a move for a full-time job or a return to further my education. There were finer details, of course, but they’re irrelevant here. Obviously the latter route won.
Now here I am, nearly two years later and all that much closer to a master’s degree. The e-mail serves as a reminder of not only where I came from but where I am. This is the true victory lap. It’s enabled me an outlook on life and a perspective on college that was lacking during my undergraduate tenure. Above everything else, I’ve learned not to worry too much.
A lot occurred to me that summer after graduation almost instantly. I touched down in Boston not more than five days after May commencement. Within a week I clung to Facebook for social life support, uploading pictures into albums and even sending YouTube videos to friends. I previously avoided Facebook photo album creation, yet overnight it became a favorite pastime. The sight of newly uploaded graduation pictures brought as much sorrow as it did joy.
I knew a handful of people in Boston, all co-workers with their own lives and schedules. I longed for the meet-and-greet bar environment of a college town, or the random projects and organizations providing opportunity to meet fresh faces.
It was a new city. The prospect of a job was on the horizon. I was loving life and at the same time absolutely scared as hell. The novelty of being an “adult” had not worn off, yet I could already feel its repercussions. Three months earlier I was most concerned with who I was partying with next weekend. Now I found myself debating the true advantages of medical and dental health benefits. The little bubble around Muncie had burst. I knew the world was big, but suddenly Indiana seemed like a blade of grass in a field of opportunity.
So many things I’d worried about in school were really just petty concerns in the grand picture. Grades. Arguments. Grudges. Identity. It didn’t matter. It never mattered. Why had I cared so much?
College quickly brought on the same trivial feeling high school had after graduation. No, I hadn’t missed the tests, the late-night cramming sessions or the busy work. I missed my friends. I missed being in a creative environment. I missed mid-afternoon beers, random hallway “’Sups?” and spontaneous lunch gatherings. I missed college.
When people tell me they want to go back to college, I know the daily routine monotony is somewhat to blame. However, the majority of that emotion is a desire to return to the same place with the same people. The social climate is missed, not the place itself. When you really ponder that, there’s no way to recreate what you’ve just experienced. That’s the most frightful part of moving on: it’s not the push forward, it’s letting go of what we’ve had.
To this day I remain gripped by freshman behavior. A small piece of me judges and despises their (sometimes innocent) actions, yet further reflection tells me that despise is rooted deeply in envy. Some part of me wishes to be back in those shoes, in those times with those friends. I want to go back knowing what I know now, conscious that everything would turn out just fine. Then I recall the stress, tests, arguments and other dismal moments I’ve overwritten with the good times. Maybe I don’t want to do it again, after all.
Someday walking through the Atrium will evoke the same feeling you got the first time you visited your high school cafeteria after graduation. McKinley Avenue will seem as small as the hallway leading to your first period class. You don’t stop to think about that, and a lot of other things, until you’re gone. You never really notice you’ve left until you stop to take it all in. Perhaps that’s by design.
The hardest part of graduating college is coping with the end of it.
Leave a Reply