I currently walk into my kitchen and have a few options. I could whip something up with my grocery supplies: a loaf of bread, or on a good day, a loaf of bread, a bag of bagels and a sack of apples. No, I’m not on a meal plan, I just don’t provide myself with much to eat. My other options include stealing food from my roommates or going out. I prefer the latter to keep the peace.
Looking back, I didn’t know what I had in the pre-college days. I remember growing up in my parent’s house bemoaning the lack of variety in our food. “Why don’t we have Girl Scout Cookies? Jack and Sam have Girl Scout Cookies.” However, we had so much more than I even realized. Now, living as I do, I walk into my parent’s kitchen and it’s as if I’ve stepped into Wolfgang Puck’s. 90 percent of the time the rationale for a surprise visit home is: “I’m hungry.”
There were a lot of constants in our past we never fully appreciated, constants left behind when we entered college. I never appreciated the value of a fully stocked first-aid kit. I would cut myself or pull a muscle and I practically had a pharmacy to fix me. Advil, bandages, the works were at my disposal. Now, whenever I cut myself, I really only have one constant option: toilet paper or paper towels, whichever we’re not out of, and N.C . State Duct Tape to fasten.
My story is not a story of a man impoverished, it is a story of the actualized dream of a former, younger, dumber self. I don’t think it’s a giant leap to say we all thought we knew better than our parents back in the day. To me, it was completely reasonable that my 13 years of public schooling and life experiences enabled me to leapfrog my parent’s intellect. We thought, I thought, we could do better for ourselves if just given the chance.
After 18 years we were given our chance in the form of college. Hedonism became our only governor. Our version of doing better involved doing everything we wanted and scrapping all else. Cookout runs became bi-weekly instead of bi-monthly, and holidays became more frequent than laundry days.
The problem with all this is there is no time for reflection. You don’t see your change as it’s happening. It takes a while — for me it took about four years. Of course others could see it plain as day. I had a freshman year English teacher, Laura Linker, who near the end of my first semester asked if any of us practiced moderation. Uniformly we raised our hands. She laughed at us, said we were full of it and carried on with her lesson.
Linker could see what we could not, she had perspective. She could see the errors in our ways we were ignorant to. To us, we believed we were living as we should. The frontier we were blazing was so new, so uncultivated, we could not find its flaws. Our perspective was weak to say the least.
Perspective is slowly gained as the years progress. As you become immersed in what is new and detached from what was, you begin to compare the two and realize what you want. Most realizations come simply: Carrying a pint glass of water to class because you don’t have any clean water bottles will make you reconsider the importance of household chores. A barren pantry teaches the merits of a grocery store trip every Sunday. Falling asleep in class will prescribe the discipline to go to bed before Mike and Mike in the Morning.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved the ride in college, there are many aspects I’ll take with me. But as it’s coming to a close, I’m realizing the merits of what I left behind. The importance of instituting what I took for granted and let go. Maybe that is one of the central points to college: to expose yourself to everything so that when you leave you can start building your own life with a little perspective.
