Today, I had the chance to live life like a real college student. I made little to no contact with parents and just tried living it out. It was relatively stable, but reality did have a habit of showing its ugly head. This is all a part of growing up and living for yourself and getting the chance to see what its like in the future.
Waking up was as normal as can be, meet up with the other ILC members, go to lunch, that sort of thing. Then reality set in when I had to do my laundry. I did not reload my card so I went to the library to refill it, and just my luck, it was closed because it is after Independence day. It's just another piece of reality, because this is unlike home, where all you have to do is load up and go, there is an entire process and it can get time consuming. From loading the card with money, to lugging the clothes from the fourth floor to the basement, then making sure you get back in time so that no one would take out your clothes. Its just something all people have to do.
After that misfortune came school work. This was the day where school work was to be done. I could have easily made a choice to go out and watch a movie with friends or play ultimate Frisbee, but as a young adult, I hit the books and worked out the difficult, six chapter reading and made it through. My efforts were rewarded because I felt like I have achieved the impossible where if I were at home, my time would be spent doing something less productive.
Now today I decided to do a little experiment, go outside my comfort zone, instead of dedicating my evening to my ILC cohorts, I decided to spend it with new friends and just seeing how it is without the cushion of friendship I have with them. It was new, I didn't know every aspect of them, but it was nice to see the different people. I had the chance to eat dinner with them and hang out. We talked for a while about where we come from, what we do, why they chose Brown. Interestingly enough, one of them has been going to all sorts of summer programs since the sixth grade. As usual, there was one event to cap off all events and that was playing an assortment of tag related games with about twenty students and three RA's in the main green at night. It was really fun and that only further reinforced the connection between all of us.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteToday you learned one of the BIG lessons in life: the real world sucks!
Chances are, Andrew even after you get out of college you'll be living in an apartment for a year or two and you may not even have laundry facilities on the same block. That's when you need to be sure you have real money and a way to haul your dirty clothes to the laundromat. And there you won't have the luxury of leaving your stuff to come back later. In the real world people will steal your sopping clothes while you're away.
And when you get into the real world and on your own you'll get to make some of those decisions you made today: beer and pool with my buds or clean the house, wash the clothes and finish the work I brought home from the office. Tough choices, Andrew, but these are the ones you'll get to make every day until you die.
And I hate to sound picky here but when you write: "I made little to no contact with parents" what that really means is that you actually did make contact with them. You either contacted them or you didn't. Toughing it out is when you actually DON'T make contact with them for a day.