As I sat at my desk the other day, a gentle rain fell outside. It has rained a lot in the year since I moved to University Town. There were weeks and at least one month where rain fell every day. The rain had snuck up on this particular day and created the kind of conditions conducive to frolicking barefoot in puddles. I was too busy reminiscing to partake in any frolicking, however.
My freshman year of college went by fast, to be sure. At times it seemed to be barely crawling along, like an earthworm baking in the afternoon sun. It wasn't until after the summer interim had begun that I realized how much I had learned and how little of that knowledge was acquired in the classroom.
Someone once said that "the real world is my college." Certainly there is truth to that, but many of the wonderful experiences I've had in the past year would surely not have happened if not for the loosely structured world of postsecondary academia.
One of my recent epiphanies is the fact that the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know. This semester, I'm taking Biology 101, which will hopefully make December the last time I'll be required to set foot in a scientific lab. Sure, I can pluralize apocalypse (apocalypses, not apocalypae, which is better if only for its phonetic reference to dessert), but I can't tell you a whole lot about the breakdown of amino acids. Knowledge is like a sea of pudding. The bedrock stuff sinks to the bottom and pitches a tent, but the lecture notes on Intro to Trig kind of crust over on top and get flaked off.
All foods aside, another important skill I have honed in my college experience is critical analysis, and not just of popular literature. It is good practice to, on a regular basis, analyze your surroundings, the situations you put yourself in, and the daily interactions you have with others. Oprah does a lot of talking about living your best life, but she should take a page from the book of Pat, analyze her relationship with Stedman, and make a move already.
One of the best life tools I came through freshman year with was an idea of what I want to do with my life. In a word, I want to write, which probably is no surprise considering that Professional Writing (it's English, light on the Shakespeare) is my major. Plus, a degree in writing leaves the door wide open for me. Anyway, someone tell Joseph Campbell that I'm following my bliss.
In this vein, my work on the staff of University Paper has been alternately frustrating, rewarding and exciting. I said last year that I planned to stage a coup at said paper, but apparently it's going to be an inside job since I'm working my way up through the ranks of the editorial board. My freelance work has yet to get off the ground, given the fact that my pursuit of it is lackadaisical at best.
While adhering to my emotional and economic philosophy of "you get what you need," I'm also figuring out that no one can go it alone. You've got to have a solid support system of people you love, people who love you - a concept memorialized forever in songs like "You Raise Me Up" and "Lean on Me."
It would appear that I have all the answers, but there are never any answers without questions, and the best Q&A sessions have many more questions than answers. What else is critical thinking for?
I guess my question is, will college ever get hard? (Knock on wood.) Maybe I heard too many horror stories growing up, or maybe I've been juggling so much for so long that it doesn't even seem like a circus act anymore, but frankly I expected more of an intellectual challenge.
I'm loving the hell out of ethics, though, and I can't wait to take philosophy. I may even read some Kierkegaard one of these days just for fun. Or maybe I'll stick to getting my weekly doses of spirituality and intellectualism from telly.
A few weeks ago, Rachel and I discussed the impending semester. I posited that as we entered our sophomore year, we'd know what we were doing and where we were going. Freshman year is for getting your feet wet, I announced, and this year there's nothing stopping us.
As the conversation wound down, Rachel planned to go hunt down a job. She put down the phone for a minute while she went to get a sweater. When she returned, I asked why she was wearing a sweater in August. "It's raining," she said. "It's been raining here all day."
"It's not raining in University Town," I replied. "Here, the sky is crystal clear."
