College life

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College has been a bundle of hits and misses so far. I've become so spend thrifty that I subconsciously do cost-benefit analyses and optimization diagrams in my head when I shop for things. I've become maddeningly organized and I contstantly worry about everything that I do and if it's going to help me in my future. People tell you to have fun but also work hard. Its hard to balance the two especially when all the work you have to do for your classes take up all your time. There's no time for fun! I hate how I feel like we're on some sort of time limit to graduate quickly and everything we do in our life is being timed and measured on how well we do things. Ahh the competition! Especially with the government cutting back on education funding, my parents told me to "hurry up and graduate" so I won't have to worry about tuition increases and paying off loans for the rest of my life. This life that i know nothing in where it'll lead to. I've never felt so lost and with the rush to graduate early, it's even more pressure on me. I can't believe as I'm entering into my junior year of college I have to really know what i'm doing for the rest of my life. It's now or never. Med school? Dental school? it's all iffy now especially since I don't even know if i'll get in. Whatever happened to equal opportunity in education? If it's really an equal opportunity then why are we always worrying about getting accepted into a school/program or worrying about college financial situations?

On the up side, there is so much room to roam about and be your nutty self and pick the people you want to be friends with. The key is to swim straight and avoid both the Scylla of the academics/clubs overworked Wildcat and the Charybdis all-partied-out-on-a-Sunday-night Wildcat. The amazing paradox of college life is that I have so much free time, but when I look back on my day, I realize that I had very little control over what to do with that "free time." College life is my unofficial sixth course. And trust me; it gives me plenty of homework each and every moment...

Day by day I am slowly becoming the guy from Memento. My short-term memory is shot to the point where I don't know what I'm supposed to do for tomorrow unless I scribble it down on a piece of paper, on a virtual Post-It, and in my planner, all at once. Organization, habit, and routine now form my triangle of calm; if I step outside, I just might collapse. What a sad state we are in. Back in the day, Greek boys could sing to you the whole of The Odyssey from heart. These days I pat myself on the back if I can recall half the commercials I've seen in the last three minutes.

However, Leonard Shelby has a unifying purpose to his life: to find and kill the John G. who raped and murdered his wife. What is my purpose? Having experienced a quasi-quarter-life crisis, as you can see from the paragraph above, I still can't answer that question. According to the "Justification for Higher Learning" poster above my bed, the overarching goal in life is to get a nice condo by the coast, flanked by five stylin' cars. According to a lecture by white translator and hermitologist (yes, as in one who studies religious hermits) Red Pine that I attended on Thursday, the overarching goal in life is to achieve either nirvana or The Way, preferably by living for 20 to 40 years in the woods of some obscure Chinese mountain. Perhaps I should just stick with the school of thought I have always adhered to all my life: there is no definitive meaning of life. Life is just meant to be lived.

What do you think?

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