Sometimes I wonder how these young kids in my class deal with life. The ones who are like 21 or 22, straight out of college, who believe their volunteer positions and club leaderships constitute real life experiences. I wonder what kind of perspective they have when they have never left the institutional bubble, lived outside a slightly artificial environment, or known what it is like to be responsible for someone other than themselves.
This isn't about critiquing their lack of maturity (I don't have that much more of a leg up) as much as commenting on my own maturational development. I used to think, as a college senior, that I had overgrown my bubble. I thought I was too old for frat parties, too old for dinning hall food, too old for a town that had one street, and too old for putting effort into a grade. I wanted to use my skills to make something real, set and meet my own goals, and have a home-cooked meal at the end of the day. It was like all of a sudden I had a growth spurt and I needed new (and classier, not made disgusting by Hanover weather) shoes to fill.
What followed in my first few months out of college were some valuable lessons, mainly to show that as much as college tries to prepare you for life, it is not quite enough. Like how it didn't warn me not to drive a 11' U-Haul truck into a garage with a 9' height limit. It taught me shit about apartment hunting. It didn't show me how to fill out taxes or separate colors for laundry (I still don't). Luckily I learned fast and managed to change a few things in my life that distinguish the pre-real life from the post-real life me. For example, I have and wear jewelry and perfume. I used my neighborhood dry cleaning as well as shoe repair services (thanks Boston cobblestone streets). I don't eat second dinners consisting of fried mozzarella sticks from FoCo, or order mediocre pizza from EBAs at 1:45 a.m. I exercise on a regular basis. I know that the difference between a good and crappy job is not what grade I got but how much of myself, my thoughts, and my personality I put into my work. I don't have as much disdain as I used to for the North Face and pearls. I drink good beer.
I could definitely continue but the point is not to contrast and compare the way a makeover reality show would do. Maturity is evolutional in that it doesn't happen overnight. Being back in school after a hiatus is very different this time around, and I have the past two years to thank for that. Even if I'm still a work in progress, I'm more grounded, balanced, and most of all I know what I want to get out of this mess that we call life. And I don't have to completely stop eating ramen.
