Display Case

Classes have started. I am taking Literary Landmarks (Fancy name for English), Satire (Fancy name for English), French (Fancy name for — wait, sorry), The History of Science and Technology (Fancy name for MY REQUIRED SCIENCE CREDIT) and The American Century. I haven’t been to the last one yet as it’s on Wednesday Nights and classes started on Thursday. It’s a really long class, but it’s only once a week and if worst comes to worst, I can always bring my laptop and play Spider Solitaire to pass the time.

Everything seems pretty easy, and quite a few of the courses seem pretty interesting, but I still feel rather directionless. There are a lot of people here who have their whole degree planned out already. They know exactly where they’re going, and even exactly what they want to do after university’s over. When people ask ME what I want to do with my life, I answer “write stuff, maybe” and then try to steer the conversation towards television sitcoms in the 1980s.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy university, because I do. I have a great time here and it feels great to be back here after the summer I had, but I see university as more of a personal experience than I do as a conduit for something more substantial. I’m not here so I can be a doctor or a lawyer or park ranger like a lot of people seem to be — rather, I’m here because it’s fun. And I learn things. And in the end I feel like it makes me a different person. Growth, you know? Growth is good. Except fungal growth. But I digress.

Sometimes I envy the people that have their whole future mapped out already. Sometimes I don’t at all. I’m not sure I want the next 4-to-8 years of my life to be a straight line. Where’s the excitement there? Where’s the drama, and the wild twisting turns? I’m only nineteen years old. That’s probably not even a quarter of my life lived — I’d like to think there’s a lot of surprises in store for me yet.

I look forward to the feeling of waking up one morning when I’m 35 and thinking about the glorious zig-zagging path that my life has taken — the roller coaster with the hairpin turn, the dark tunnel and fucking huge drops that leave your stomach in your chest. It’s a carnival ride on water that passes under a bridge and soaks everyone you know.

Sure, I might be thinking that after I wake up in a cardboard box that is my house. And the only use my caffiene-addled brain might be able to find for my English degree is to tape it to a big stick and use it to fend off the imaginary street pirates that are trying to steal my collection of soiled wigs and parts of Transformer action figures I found in the park. But still — at least I don’t have to take biology.