A long, long time ago, I was a freshman in college. I was so excited to load up my explorer and move into the dorms with 2 random roommates. My whole life fit into a few boxes and and would be cramped up in the room that was in Reid Hall (the only dorm I saw on campus back during Preview that I said looked sad and dingy). I learned to love living in that tiny space.
I enjoyed the little accomplishments that came with living "on my own" for the first time. For example, I remember the first time I realized I had run out of clean clothes. I sat down on the dorm floor and tried desperately to remember my mom's laundry words of wisdom. My much more experienced roommate, Maggie, looked at me laughingly and asked, "Had I really never done my own laundry?!" And seriously, apart from moving clothes from washer to dryer, the laundry world was an unknown land of mystery to me. "Is an orange gator shirt a dark or a light?" "Do I have to do something special to keep my bras in good shape?" "How do you wash a striped shirt?".
I remember how excited I was when I could claim that I had used an entire tube of toothpaste from start to finish, all by myself ! I loved doing my own laundry, pretending I could cook in the dorm kitchen, using my own toothpaste and running off at all hours of the night to get ice cream at the union.
My roommate taught me much more than which clothes were dark and which were light. She taught me the beauty of wearing a thong, sat with me during my first beers (on her birthday) and showed me how to put make-up on. Before college, the only alcohol I'd ever had was the wine at church.
I remember dreaming of law school and how I would dress fashionably beautiful and impress the jury and judges and win lots of cases. I figured out which classes I had to go to and which I could skip and still pass. I did crosswords with Rachel during Calc 2 lecture and paid highly focused attention during TA class.
Somewehere between the 5 apartments and 12 roommates I had during my college years, law school lept out of the picture, the ideas teaching, nursing and motherhood crept in and out and then I graduated. I lost the explorer (to a relatively harmless incident with lots of speed and a gaurd rail on I-175) and switched to a more sensible car that would take me into the years after college and could suit the needs of the possiblity of children. There was a period between my junior and senior year when I realized that I was doing it all way! too! fast! I met a boy and we fell in love. I took off for Australia for a couple of months to slow the pace of college and the impending graduation that carried with it an enormous amount of pressure.
I am now sitting in my 5th apartment in the same city. I am elbow deep in disapppointment with the career path I am stumbling on now. Working the front desk at the hotel was easy enough, the Alligator was fun but stressful, I loved working at the chocolate store, and then I was ready to move on. I always assumed I would just have a fabulous job that would pay me lots of money and I would be extremely happy. Turns out, I am happy but simultaneously dissatisfied. I still enjoy doing laundry, and now I share my tubes of toothpaste with my ultra sweet boyfriend. I still wear thongs and have developed a strong obsession with shoes and purses. I drink very occassionaly. I wish I had more friends or was at least better at keeping up with the small handful of friends I do have.
I was looking at some pictures from someone's facebook (a site that is addicting and somehow marks either the level or lack of achievement I've cultivated vs what other people my age are doing) and I came across a picture of a friend who went to grad school and moved to Texas to be with the man she loved right after. She went to school for elementary education and got a job right smack in the thick of exactly what she wanted to do. She was sitting in between a huge group of fourth graders with a huge smile on her face, saying how much she loved her kids. I thought to myself, "I could do that". Laney just got a fairly decent paying job as a high school english teacher, Marcy works at high school in gainesville teaching. Other English majors did it, why can't I? Frankly, I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid I will discover I don't like it, the way I discovered I didn't like banking and the way I'm finding I don't much care for being a secretary.
Do I really want to invest more time and more money into an education only to find that I'm not really sure I want to take my life in that direction shortly after entering that career field? There isn't really a fabulous wardrobe associated with being an elementary school teacher, pumps are almost flat out of the question. The idea of dealing with parents freaks me out. Yet, I always, always find myself toying with the idea of teaching.
Reading the Wonderful Lie has really got me thinking about what I really want to do and wondering how long it will take to get to the point of knowing. The only thing that so far seems to be working out is the fact that I am still in love.
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