I knew this would happen. I juggle part-time jobs for over a year in search of the “perfect” full time job, and once I find it, I feel so overwhelmed that I want to drop everything and leave. This isn’t a new or profound way of thinking–we all feel a bit suffocated when we know the stakes are high and we can’t just walk out the door, right? Relationships, jobs, school–commitments can make you feel secure and terrified all at once.
Call me a hopeless romantic, but summer reading is, without a doubt, one of the most dreamy and exciting times of the year. As a kid, I dreaded the hateful little math packets we had to toil over during sacred summer breaks—math teachers were monsters—but I welcomed the summer reading list like an old friend. Looking back, I do remember complaining about the lame books we had to choose from (Whirligig? Are you kidding me?), and I completed the unconvincing essays during the last week of summer while scratching mosquito bites and agonizing over the end of summer.
My grandpa doesn’t say a lot (he prefers to whistle at me when he wants me to get something), but what he does say really has punch. He’s a really sweet grandpa, but he has a way of being totally devastating. For example, this was his response to my graduation from Smith: “I think every graduation day is a sad day. For the first time, you realize that you’re alone, and that you don’t know what to do.”
If my dreamy, wanderlust Smithie self had any idea how she would end up after graduating, she would throw a serious tantrum.
Write this down in the new Smith college view book for prospective students: When I first set foot on the Smith College campus, took a few deep breaths of the fragrant air and peered across the rolling green hills lined with gorgeous Victorian “dorms,” watched heady, nervy and intellectually exciting students skip to class and crunch through red and orange leaves, I literally cried real, human tears at the thought of NOT getting into my dream college after searching for so long.
I don’t have it yet. In fact – I’d rather be sick with it than the alternative, “real-worlditis,” which all the other authors have got. But still, it seemed appropriate because, no matter what the “itis,” this blog will hopefully be the cure for what ails me.
At this point, I haven’t actually begun senior year. I’m actually in New York City, doing an unpaid internship. My girlfriend and I are living in a gorgeous apartment on the Upper West Side. Well, our room looks out onto a brick wall, and we are plagued by an on-again-off-again homicidal cat. But other than that, it’s great.
I’m an aspiring musician. But that’s not really who I am. Sometimes I think writing music is more of a chore than a joy. But others I feel like music is all there is. Anyway, no one is any one thing probably. If they were that would be really boring. Oh, and another thing, I always say “I’d rather be weird than boring”. That might be the single most important fact about who I am.
Or, for this blog’s purposes, that fact might be that I’m about to enter senior year of college, still finding my exit strategy, and I’m really fucking scared.
