A bachelor of hard knocks
I still vividly remember waking up on moving day of my first year and listening to Ben Fold’s “Still Fighting It” on the drive to Guelph with my things.
I remember listening to it on my headphones that first night I slept in residence, under the bright green light (how Gatsby of me) of my smoke detector, quietly, over the soft sounds of my roommates’ snoring; “Everybody knows it hurts to grow up, but everybody does.”
I remember not wanting to cry, but being unable to stop myself. I remember the feeling of being on some great precipice between my childhood and the rest of my life and the profound ache that comes with the knowledge that things are changing, slowly but irrevocably.
How strange it is to be staring down the barrel of the last six years. Soon, in the next month or so, I will get into my parents’ Camry (equipped with a parking pass from last semester) and make the 50 minute drive back to Hamilton and never return to Guelph again. Daily, at least. Probably. Maybe. I’ll be the last to know.
Anyway, here I am. A degree in hand, virginity lost, several thousand dollars in debt. I’m not sure if I’m emerging with much else. A bona fide diagnosed mental illness, sure. Extremely-late diagnosed ADHD, certainly. Even a boyfriend (I wish I could tell my high school self), providing we don’t break up between the day I finish this article and the next day when it will be printed. I learned to contour and how to wash my hair only at the roots. I have become more powerful than I ever thought possible.
I don’t have any overarching lessons or pithy declarative statements to sum up the things I’ve “learned” in my five years as a student and additional year as a hard hitting journalist for the student paper. I can’t give anyone anything to write on upcycled slates of white-painted wood to hang on their living room walls (except maybe, “Fuck it, make sangria”). I’m certain that many people have had better times than I did at university, but I’m also certain that even more have had far worse.
To give you a little bit of perspective, here’s a little bit about yours truly.
Thanks to my December birthday, I moved into residence when I was 17, having never spent more than a week away from my parents. I’d never really been to a party, had never been on a date, and had just decided (motivated by heart break) to get a pretty rad set of straight across full bangs. Not my best look—and that’s saying something. I mean, I’m obviously so traumatized by those bangs that this is my second editorial that’s mentioned them.
So there I was, an awkward, uncertain 17-year-old kid, walking into Johnston Hall, completely unprepared for the lifestyle of the rich and the famous (in other words, the lifestyle of understandably horny teenagers high off of being away from their parents). I was surrounded by people who felt bigger than me, older than me, cooler than me, smarter than me. I just wasn’t ready, wasn’t old enough, or certain enough of myself.
Okay, I guess I lied. I do have a little lesson for you right here. You don’t have to read it if you don’t feel like didacticism right now. Still reading? Here goes: it is so okay to feel lonely. Like, obviously not forever and you don’t have to stay like that, but you aren’t a freak for feeling that and you certainly aren’t missing out on anything profound.
Don’t get me wrong, university was hilarious.
One time I was almost evicted from my residence for “tampering with fire safety equipment” because I taped a piece of construction paper over the demonically bright light on my smoke detector. Another time, I got home from night class to see my roommates sitting casually around a large bag of cocaine on our coffee table and they just didn’t address how weird it was. Once, my closest friend and I hot boxed the announcing booth in the football field. The same friend and I skipped an entire day of classes to binge watch The Inbetweeners.
Every single time I visited my friends in other cities for a weekend was the new best time of my life. Every single paper I ever had the sheer joy to write about poetry was the best paper of my life. The title of every essay I wrote in university contained a reference to a Fall Out Boy lyric and each one was the best title of my life.
It was also terrible. Growing up means tough stuff. I’ve read Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. It didn’t prepare me, however, for grief, for loss. For experiencing another person’s grief. For my own.
It was terrible because, while I had always dealt with depression, university seemed to incubate it. I went through self-destructive periods wherein I tried to jeopardize school, my relationships, and myself. Sometimes you learn that running out into the rain, tipping your head back, and howling out “enough” won’t actually do any good. I took a herculean effort to pull myself out of that quagmire. Talk to someone, take some meds—watch out for the adjustment period though; they made me real sleepy.
In so many ways, I am still the teenager I was then. I am still listening to Fall Out Boy daily, I still don’t really know what size pants I should wear, I don’t exercise, I occasionally daydream about my first love (really hot but ultimately kind of an asshole. Wore weird plaid cargo shorts), I still have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life, and I think everyone is lying about understanding what postmodernism is.
I think it’s okay to have no idea what you want to do with your life. For now, I’m more or less content to be bumbling around my 20s in the dark, trying to get enough sleep and find all the events with free food.
My plans changed. If you’d asked me in first, second, third, or fourth year, I would have told you with a resolute look on my face that I would pursue a masters and then a PhD. I had the jokes ready. I wanted my brother and I to get our doctorates in non-medicinal fields so our parents could make the joke, “Our kids are doctors, but not the kind that help people.”
Now, I’m not so sure. And that’s fine. I’m doing just fine.
Photo courtesy of Sierra Paquette-Struger.