For Once, I'm Not Afraid of the Dark

It's funny; I always assumed that once I got to college I would never want to leave. As a kid, college seemed like the be-all end-all--- I loved wandering around the Princeton University campus, pretending that I was a student, wandering empty halls that reeked of Ivy League glamor. Now that I'm actually in college, however, two things have become evident to me: 1. I never really took the time to think about what I'll be doing after college, and 2. I can't wait to get the hell out of here.

It's not that I'm not enjoying college; I am. I love my classes, I love the fact that I have 3-hour seminars where, when the professor gives us bathroom breaks, we stand in the hallway discussing sexual politics and Simone de Beauvoir and never actually get around to going to the bathroom or filling up our water bottles. I love the fact that for the next few years of my life, I have the supreme luxury of wallowing in my intellectual interests without having to worry about paying rent and getting a job. But at the end of the day, the fact that I'm (finally!) throws into light the fact that the next phase of my life ---the one after college, the one I never gave much thought to--- is coming up fast. I know that I'm only a Freshman, but the college years go by quickly and with my AP scores, I'm already on course to graduate early. And the thing is, that doesn't scare me. Rochester has a program called Take 5, in which students can take an extra year here, tuition-free, to study whatever they want. I think it's a pretty neat idea, but after talking to a bunch of classmates who plan on doing Take 5, I've realised that what many of them want is not so much the opportunity to delve deeper into a subject of interest, but rather to delay for one more year the perils of real-world existence.

For my part, I think I would go crazy if I had to spend more than four years as an undergraduate. I think a lot of this has to do with the time I spent outside of the academic arena last semester; seeing aspects of the real world that I had never before imagined was so inspiring that I cannot wait to get back out there. There are days when I am so frustrated with this cabin-fever feeling I have that I just think to myself, studying is just something you have to do in order for you to be really effective when you get back out there. I am chock-full of wanderlust, and as terrifying as it is that I'm a Creative Writing / Women's Studies / International Relations major who hasn't given much thought to her life beyond the place where she is now, I really can't wait for the next part.

This mantra may be radically different when I'm a senior researching job prospects in the out-of-work-feminist-writer field, but we'll see how it goes.