Transitions (Or: Beginning-to-Mid Life Crises)

My brother is coming out in a couple of weeks to spend his spring break with us.  This is something he used to do each year, when he was younger, those last years of high school and beginning years of college.  But then his social life took off and trips to Florida and the beach replaced trips to see us, which is cool.

So I never planned on seeing him this year.  Never gave it a moment's notice or even knew when his break was - then he called and said that he and his girlfriend are coming to stay with us.  Yay!

My brother is a senior in college, a Computer Science/Engineering major with a math minor, and I soooooo do not envy him the path that lies ahead.  He is in that stage of trying to find internships, trying to plan the last year of school, saying goodbye to some friends who are graduating and moving away, watching the first of his group of friends marry off, and trying to juggle his own serious relationship in light of the future.  Will it lead to marriage?  If so, when?  And what about jobs?  And where will he/they live?...I don't miss those days.

I loved college.  I loved getting to live in an environment that was structured around learning.  It was intoxicating to me and even though I was stressed and overwhelmed a lot of the time, campus was a place where I fit in.  I knew I was supposed to be there.  It was just right for me.  I loved long conversations with friends, late nights in coffee joints, and that pervasive feeling of just knowing you are right.  About everything.  No one in the history of the world has ever been as right as you are now.  The future is yours for the taking and although your present life is great, it's almost as if your life hasn't yet begun.  You live for four years on the cusp.

But even while I was in college and enjoying it, I bristled when adults would shake their heads, gaze off into space and say, "These are the best years of your life."  I was always like, no, no, no.  I understood what they meant (see previous paragraph).  I understood that the traditional college experience is one of not having to worry about bills, or marriage, or the kids, or losing your job, or that sketchy X-ray from the doctor's office.  In comparison to "real life," college is a dream.

But from my know-it-all perspective back then, I would fire back that college is also a time of never really being finished with anything.  You cram for a test, only to pass it and have another one right around the corner.  You finish a 25-page paper just in time to get the next one started for your thesis advisor to review.  Your English Lit teacher assigns a classic novel each week and couldn't care less that your Western Civ II prof is doing the same thing - oh, and so is your Psychology TA.  I looked at working adults as people who worked for 8 hours a day and then were done.  They didn't go home and study until all hours of the night like I did.

It's not that I didn't enjoy college - it's just that I thought their nostalgia was a bit exaggerated and unrealistic.  And actually, I still do.  I've never had a conversation with my brother and thought to myself, ahhhhh, these are the best years of his life.  No.

But hearkening back a moment to that post on Passion, I do miss learning at the rate that I did in college.  It was like the whole world opened up and I was exposed to new ideas constantly and I could form opinions about them, and consider them.  I learn now, but I have to make a point of it.  I have to fit in reading around the drudgery of my "day job" and traffic and paying the bills and monitoring the kidney stone.  You know I had to get that in here somehow.

But no one is walking into my office and pondering existentialism or running an idea past me about historical revisionist interpretations of Holocaust literature.  I'm just sayin.  You know what I mean?  Can someone give me an Amen?

I can't wait to see my brother and his girlfriend, though!  Fun times!