10:19pm
“I feel like my life is cleansing its colon
and it feels good
but odd
cuz its not used to not being so clogged
so it almost feels lacking
but now my brain is trying to catch up
and understand that it’s not empty or lacking
but just ready to be refilled with something better”
This was the best way that I could describe to my best friend, who seemed to be letting me go as we both have been making this drastic move from home to college, how I felt about losing her: through a Facebook message at 3am, since she had been failing to answer my calls. Not a day goes by in an all-female dorm that you can’t hear someone complaining about a boyfriend who “forgets” to call, or a friend from home who has chosen to “act new” now that they have all left their high school’s hometown. A common theme, however, exists among all of these stories of frustration, aggravation, and hurt feelings: transitions.
They say that experience brings maturity and that mistakes must be made along the way in order to gain it, but how, I ask, is it that so many of us “young people” at such a pivotal time as this seem to be lacking the basic tools to deal with this grave shift towards adulthood. Is it so simply dismissed as being that “we all go through it,” and “it will pass,” or is there more? I’m keen onto the generation that has raised me and my peers. They knew far better than the rest of us just how much of a sink or swim potential this “away-from-home” college experience held for us as first time freshman.
I have seen some of my peers so homesick to the point that they literally packed their bags and went home, withdrawing from this school altogether, and others who claim this time to be the greatest that they’ve ever had; yet, not near one whom I’ve spoken to can hold a thirty minute conversation without mentioning a friend from home, or that small taco place on Belvidere back by their house, or their hometown’s sports team. We were expected to so suddenly drop anywhere from 17 to 20 years’ worth of our lives and with full-faith move on to something new. But how? Should we drag our childhoods on our backs, never forgetting every burden and goodtime they held? Or should we leave it all behind, running full-speed as fast as we can? I suppose learning the balance between the two is what it’s all about. Learning to manage this transition that I keep being reminded of, one which I would rather avoid and that seems to do nothing but overcomplicate my life before it finally decides to give, purging the unnecessary troubles, must be what college is all about, for the classroom is not even the half of it.
“I feel like my life is cleansing its colon
and it feels good
but odd
cuz its not used to not being so clogged
so it almost feels lacking
but now my brain is trying to catch up
and understand that it’s not empty or lacking
but just ready to be refilled with something better”
This was the best way that I could describe to my best friend, who seemed to be letting me go as we both have been making this drastic move from home to college, how I felt about losing her: through a Facebook message at 3am, since she had been failing to answer my calls. Not a day goes by in an all-female dorm that you can’t hear someone complaining about a boyfriend who “forgets” to call, or a friend from home who has chosen to “act new” now that they have all left their high school’s hometown. A common theme, however, exists among all of these stories of frustration, aggravation, and hurt feelings: transitions.
They say that experience brings maturity and that mistakes must be made along the way in order to gain it, but how, I ask, is it that so many of us “young people” at such a pivotal time as this seem to be lacking the basic tools to deal with this grave shift towards adulthood. Is it so simply dismissed as being that “we all go through it,” and “it will pass,” or is there more? I’m keen onto the generation that has raised me and my peers. They knew far better than the rest of us just how much of a sink or swim potential this “away-from-home” college experience held for us as first time freshman.
I have seen some of my peers so homesick to the point that they literally packed their bags and went home, withdrawing from this school altogether, and others who claim this time to be the greatest that they’ve ever had; yet, not near one whom I’ve spoken to can hold a thirty minute conversation without mentioning a friend from home, or that small taco place on Belvidere back by their house, or their hometown’s sports team. We were expected to so suddenly drop anywhere from 17 to 20 years’ worth of our lives and with full-faith move on to something new. But how? Should we drag our childhoods on our backs, never forgetting every burden and goodtime they held? Or should we leave it all behind, running full-speed as fast as we can? I suppose learning the balance between the two is what it’s all about. Learning to manage this transition that I keep being reminded of, one which I would rather avoid and that seems to do nothing but overcomplicate my life before it finally decides to give, purging the unnecessary troubles, must be what college is all about, for the classroom is not even the half of it.
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