I sit here, in my room, night after night, up until inexcusable hours, Google-ing the world for all of its little and big parts--trying, as we all do around this age (and far beyond it, I’m sure), to find my niche in this place. By the end of my first year at community college, Google has yielded some valuable information, it would seem. Like so many freshmen, I’ve changed my major to something I’m actually interested in and can never get a job with (or so say my parents), looked into ten-thousand foreign and out of state programs which I’ll never be able to afford, contemplated colleges and careers and people; all to little avail. It makes me wonder, and on top of all the research (partnered, unfortunately, by meaningless hours of being poked and prodded and throwing zombie puppies at people on Facebook), what it is that drives us to this mind-numbing madness?
Making and changing my plans over and over, broken only by the occasional, “Let’s just leave the country!” I’m nearly back to where I’ve started with the whole ‘college thing’, less sure than before and therefore perhaps a little wiser. But with no one else to pay for school, and nothing to fall back on should I fail, I wonder what will become of me after this whole ordeal is over? Will I be left with the other half of community college students, with only Liberal Arts and loans and “what if I’d finished that business degree?” Will our dignity in doing what we love pull us through when the electricity gets shut off, like the starving artist painted romantically by the cinema, who’s tiny messy studio apartment doesn’t seem quite so bad while you’re filling out the course-change forms? What about at high school reunions? Vacation time you’ll never get? Your neighbor’s brand new car? What will our dignity be worth in the then?
But perhaps, could there be a little more joy in living freely than in having running water? Perhaps, in a perfect society, we could all express a bit more compassion for the person without corporate executive board member status, and let that little push serve as a means of helping them to not end up as the stereotyped dirty homeless hippy (is that what we all so fear becoming in life?).
Maybe we’re all still figuring things out on some level. Or maybe I’m just trying to plant the seed in your head as a little extra insurance for when the patchouli oil runs out. But either or any ways, I thought I’d leave you with some food for thought—why does a Nursing or Business major make us better than someone in Liberal Arts, who loves what they do? Why is a person’s perspective of another based on the petty differences in clothing or socioeconomics? Why are we so quick to ignore those who don’t match our career plights, or brush them off as having made bad decisions or bad childhoods? What will our dignity be worth in the then? And more importantly, what is our dignity worth RIGHT NOW?
Always,
~NEVER
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