Saturday, October 11, 2008

"I want more...

Impossible to ignore." Dreams by The Cranberries.

Lakeside or streetside? Upstairs or downstairs? Bunks or separate beds? All of these questions which are of supreme importance at the moment, and in the past I can recall agonizing over the importance or value of each individually--and at some point in my career here at PHC I decided ultimately that lakeside is the premium, downstairs is preferable but not necessary, and bunks are better at first until you get frustrated and then separate beds are better--but in only 8 months, all these conversations which revolve around topics like this will cease for me (though probably continue ad infinitum for the students who are still here) and I will begin to talk of other things--like grocery prices, or Church news, or interest rates, or weddings or funerals or baby showers.

But this period of life, this whole college thing--it's such in-between-ness. It's like for four (or five, in my case) years, "life"--that mysterious and frightening place where things happen--is put on hold, in a manner of speaking, and instead of actually persuing those persons and places and things, you begin making choices about who you are, so that you can persue those persons, places, and things. Sometimes they come along and you find them in the midsts of these decisions, and sometimes they were already lined up before-hand, and sometimes they are not arranged until later. But in college you get ready to be the person you will be. Habits are cemented, priorities are set, and a general direction is given to life. How bizarre that at this point in life--when I've seen the least and have the vaguest idea what I want or like, and the most immature knowlege of God and His Will in my life--that is when I am supposed to decide on everything else.

So I pays my money and I gets my education.

And I'm looking forward to having that BA, and being able to move on with that accomplished, ready to hit the next requirement our culture has created for bright young things like me. Formalized training is all well and good, but I must admit the simplicity of following someone around and learning by watching is awfully attractive. Like how you learn to work on maintenance, here on campus. I realized the other day, we old maintenance girls (since we're the senior workers now) have fallen down on the job by scheduling our work hours at times when we can't be there to train the newbies--next spring we'll try and do that more.

But yeah--I'm not saying this isn't "life," becuase this is part of life--but I'm looking forward to living not-communally, to having a somewhat more predictable schedule, and to being able to experience more--and study others' experiences a little less. Yet it's been good to study and be busy and even to live somewhat communally. Though I wonder at our American tradition of private property being so completely ignored in this social setting. (That doesn't really have much bearing on this entire discussion, but it occured to me, so I thought I'd say it.)

I'm glad the rest of my life won't include too many dorms.

I'm glad college is nearing its end, and I'm glad I get to enjoy it till then.

Isn't life ironic?

1 comment:

Danae Kelly said...

Amen. :)