A Tale of Two Minds
IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES,
IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES.
It is an odd time of year, the end of school, always bittersweet. The relief that comes with the last final passes somewhat quickly, replaced by the gnawing in your stomach on how to spend your days, what all that time was really for, and how you’ll miss it all anyway. There is some nostalgia too—or is it déjà vu—that surfaces with the end of the academic calendar. I think back to water balloons and Otter Pops. I think back to middle school Moving Up and high school graduation. Might next year be the last time I get to experience those thoughts and the feelings that accompany them? Now, it is harder to see the beginning and easier to see the end, although both still appear with clarity striking enough I could cry. I am NOT an academic, yet academia has played such a significant role in my life; I know I will miss it dearly. From where now will I obtain external validation? What will get me up in the mornings? What goals will drive me onward?
IT WAS THE AGE OF WISDOM,
IT WAS THE AGE OF FOOLISHNESS.
I wonder if I am smarter now than at the beginning of college; wonder, if so, how much of that new intelligence can be attributed to college, and, regardless, why it even matters? If I ever do receive a diploma from Western, I will have almost jumped off a bridge for it. I will have banged my head against a wall many times, both literally and figuratively, will have ignored the protests, failed to sign the petitions, sat in class, slept in class, and wondered, for hours, what percentage of WWU students own replica lightsabers and use them weekly on Friday evenings in Red Square. It is easy to dislike the world, and so I do.
IT WAS THE EPOCH OF BELIEF,
IT WAS THE EPOCH OF INCREDULITY.
I will never get over the fact that so many of my high school classmates went on to complete a bachelor’s degree in four years, right out of high school. It is clear to me now how different we must have been then. I go looking through my emails and find applications to the University of Utah, Cal Poly SLO, and UCSD. I’d applied to be an engineering student at USC, but at most of the other schools, my mind spins empty when I
try to recall what I might have selected for a possible major. Despite my father telling me it provides ample future opportunities, and even despite many of my close friends going on to study the subject, how anyone, how anyone at all might leave high school and say, “Yes! I will be studying business this fall!” is so far lost on me that it is not even worth your time to explain it. I used to ask, all the time, to nearly everyone I had a conversation with at UCSB, what they were studying and why, but none of the answers I received resonated deeply with me. Their reasoning, whatever it may have been, never seemed significant enough to me that I might devote most of four years to studying it, so I didn’t. It is an easy world to leave, but the walk away is a lonely one.
IT WAS THE SEASON OF LIGHT,
IT WAS THE SEASON OF DARKNESS.
I come to Western in the rain, in the dark, in the cold. I run seven miles when it is below 15, stopping to take pictures of the windswept, frozen seawater on the old pier pilings that make the ocean look like the Great Lakes. I sleep in a room with another man’s dirty socks on the ground and do not pick them up for a whole month. Spring comes, and I am closer to campus and closer to cleanliness. I take a math class for the first time in five years. I visit Sadie in Minneapolis, and it snows white and clean and quiet. Upon return home, the crocuses bloom, the lilacs bloom, the tulips bloom. That fall, all is not well. It is the season of darkness, and one night, I stare out from a bridge railing at the tops of the trees and wonder where courage comes from. My mom lends a hand, Sadie lends a hand, and there is a week removed from the world where I am treated like a baby and am glad for it.
IT WAS THE SPRING OF HOPE…
"Be Grateful," my father writes me this year on my birthday. "Be your Best self for those around you. Head High. Forward. Strong. Respectful. Honorable in all things. Shine." The end is near. I can feel its pull. I can picture myself walking across the stage, crying, smiling, not even wanting to be there at all, because, as I told Sadie earlier this year, the college struggle feels all too personal. Who are these people and why do they care? My hard work? Increased workforce capabilities? Another stone laid on the scale of the world economy? And besides, what does it mean to be proud of someone, especially when their values are sometimes, even frequently, at odds with the institution from which they are gaining recognition? Regardless, I want my piece of paper too. I want to get out, to be free. For now, I will work on being grateful, being strong, shining.