Knowledge, my soulmate.

Chatting with a friend today made me realize, one year post-college, working the 9 to 5, going to the gym two to three times a week, “sleeping in” until 8 on weekends, meeting up for a drink after work, going on dates with guys I don’t want to sleep with and sleeping with guys I don’t want to date, that I am finally jaded.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my job and love my friends, but like today I spent the whole day pasting formulas into Excel and formatting a survey. During lunch I balanced my checkbook. I am not devaluing the utility of Microsoft Office or balancing one’s budget, but it’s days like these when I really miss college.

Ultimately, college brought out the best in me. There were some rough patches, but college made me want to prove to myself that I was cut out to make a difference. That, as I observed the machinery of the world through protective lenses, someday I too would help make its wheels turn, and that other people would be there to help me grease the gears. Learning became something that I viewed not only as practical and useful, but nourishing, replenishing, and empowering. And I really miss learning for learning’s sake.

I realized that I have not had any remotely satisfying conversations with people in the real world. For the past year I have had so few intellectual debates, nerdy gush sessions, or vaguely scholarly discussions it’s a little discouraging. I miss the days of sitting under the gazebo with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s and pondering the moral implications of artificial intelligence, or walking into my sorority’s living room and hearing people exchange thoughts about gender roles and stereotypes, or going to a talk on a Tuesday afternoon about the clashing of traditional Islamic culture with modern civilization experienced by youth in Muslim countries. I remember attending my friends’ thesis presentations and just being amazed and inspired by how erudite they were. People seemed to be interested in so many things and open to so many ideas; college seemed like a place where, whatever crazy interest you had, there was always someone who you could bounce it off of.

I am thirsty for knowledge, and I can’t wait to learn, learn, learn. I want to experience the rush I get when studying the elegance of homeostasis in the cardiovascular system, I want to be brought close to tears by the final scene of Isben’s “A Dollhouse”, I want to revel in the absurdity of Dada poetry, read about the existential philosophies of Camus and Sartre, be haunted for weeks by Wagner’s operas, delve into the glutamine theory of schizophrenia, examine health disparities related to demographics, know why the universe is expanding, and learn to differentiate a cabernet sauvignon from a syrah by taste.

I guess this is good news since I AM practically selling my soul to debt just so I can go back to school for another 4 years followed by god knows how many more years of training. No surprise that I picked one of the careers with the highest time investment in educating oneself. Point is, knowledge is my drug; I live to learn.