Culture Shock: It's Too Quiet Here

Contributor: Speak Coffee

I’ve spent the majority of my time since leaving college waiting to go to grad school. Waiting to hear back about housing. Deferring. Re-applying. Waiting to hear back from the school. Prepping to move. Going and realizing I didn’t want to be in that grad program. Applying to new grad program. Waiting. All this means long stretches of time when I’m not making a stellar income. And a non-stellar income means moving back in with the rents.

Despite what people may think about the 20-something mooching carelessly off his parents and living the good life, it is not so. I resent that I have to move back in. It is the last thing that I wanted to do. I hate being dependent. It is its own breed of self-esteem drain to know that the world does not consider you useful enough to employ to the point where you can pay your own rent and bills and eat at the same time.

And whatever you do, once you realize you can’t live on your own do not rent Failure to Launch like I did. Oops.

I had lived in a sorority for the three years leading up to graduation. That meant that I shared a building with 30-60 women on any given day. But unlike a dorm we didn’t lock our doors and didn’t close them unless studying or sleeping. In fact, no one had a key to lock her room with. There were constantly people around, making noise, talking, gossiping, being playful, helping, doing cartwheels in the hallway, doing something. The hardest thing about living there was finding ways to be alone when I needed to chill. But after a year I had found all the nooks and crannies in the building where people were unlikely to go and also developed a sign system. If I had to finish a paper I’d leave a Do Not Disturb until 4pm I’m Writing a Paper (Exceptions Made for Fires) sign on my door. It worked wonders. And then sometime around 6pm people would creep back in and ask me how the paper went, which was really nice of them.

Moving back in with the parental unit? It was quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. There was no noise. No sound. I could hear when the furnace clicked on. There was no one to talk to save the parental unit and that was only between when parental unit got home from work until bed. This meant there was no one to talk to after 11pm on most nights. And it was just the parental unit. No one else. No variety. No noise. No music. No cartwheels.

I escaped regularly to someplace, anyplace, with people in it. Coffee shops and bookstores were my favorites because you could stay there for hours and hours and no one gave a damn. Also no one looked at you weird when the only thing you bought was one small brewed coffee. At the bookstores, no one even expected that of you.

These places had what I craved: people!

Okay, so they were people I didn’t know. And I generally didn’t have great gossipy conversations with them, didn’t chat, didn’t console or comfort any of them. Actually I found it remarkable when I exchanged more than a dozen words with anyone person. But that was okay. I talked to some people at work for longer periods even though I didn’t consider any of them friends. And I could always phone someone from college. Still, being on the phone with them wasn’t the same as having noise and action and color surrounding me.

I still do it sometimes. Even when I had roommates and classes again I’d stride out into the world as much to get away from the roommates as to see and feel and hear something different than my climate controlled box living.

My roommates from that point ... well, that is an entire post of its own.

Culture Shock: Moving Away from College

Call for commentary:

What was it like moving away from college? Leaving campus for the first time in four years without expecting to go back must be akin to the feeling you would have if you were moving to Europe or Asia without knowing when, if ever, you would come back.

Where were you going? Did you want to go there or was it decided for you? Was it what you expected? Did your parents fight you on it? Was cost a shock? Was the neighborhood a shock? Did your roommate make you homicidal? Suicidal? Or just want to never come home again?

Share your trials, tribulations or expectations met or gone awry.

The Plan: Process of Elimination

Contributor: Speak Coffee

I have no idea how old I was when I first got the question. But I know it came from my father’s friends from work. They’d always ask me if I wanted to do what my father did. Hands down: no. It never even crossed my mind. Scratch one item off my list: no biology.

In first grade I said I wanted to be a teacher, when really I just meant that I wanted to be Mrs. Dalghren. I kept saying this through third grade, when really I just wanted to be Mrs. Lake. Then somewhere in middle school I stopped having really cool teachers, or at least teachers that I thought the moon rose and sat for. That and I started babysitting whereby I learned that I do not have patience for children in large doses. Scratch two off my list.

I went to college to get a “practical” degree. I was good with computers and had taken a couple programming classes in high school. So here I was armed with my basic HTML, a little C++ and Visual Basic (Does anybody still use VB? Because I thought I was pretty hot stuff in that class and no one ever seemed to be able to tell me what to do with that skill) and I was thinking that I’d take all these classes, graduate, and be this awesome webpage designer. Except my college C++ class was the most illogical thing ever. I only passed the first semester because I had already learned the material in a much more step by step, intuitive method previously. The second semester was taught in a little hole in the basement classroom with no windows, few lights, and an instructor who’s voice would have put me to sleep even if the material wasn’t sonorous. It was the only final exam, the only test period, that I have ever failed.

Semester ended, I took my passing D+ and wrote an evaluation that read “this class made me want to be an English major.”

It would be another semester before I made good on that threat.

I thought I’d try something else that also seemed practical: Communications. Oh, think all the wonderful things that communications encompasses. Speech writers, radio DJs, newscasters, magazine editors ... and all the students who could get into those classes might have become any of those things. I was not such a student. My registration lottery number sucked. Well scratch comm. off my list.

Then I thought I’d go to law school and do all these non-law things with the degree. Politics maybe? But it turns out I didn’t like law students or the things that attorneys did as attorneys. Mostly I just wanted to tell the legislators I saw on c-span that they were being stupid and have the credentials to make them sit down and shut up.

Some things never crossed my mind. Playing the tuba was one of them.

My point is that I was doing this whole planning for the future thing by process of elimination. Same as the test taking technique they teach you to use when you don’t know which answer to bubble in.

My problem is that there are too many bubbles to choose from. And my method is not equipped to deal with the outside pressure of a) parents, b) relations, c) people I meet who want to know what I “do” and most importantly d) that little voice inside me that agrees with all of these people that I’m useless and worthless unless I successfully “do” something worthwhile.

That voice turned up the volume my junior year of college. That’s when all my senior friends made plans for their lives that started the day after graduation that didn’t include classes.

When my own senior year rolled around, students from my writing seminar asked me what I was going to do when I graduated. I told them law school. “Really?” they all asked. “You don’t want to be a writer?” I told them glibly that I also wanted to eat.

Stupid me.

It was all the pressure of the Plan. Not only did I think I had to have one, I thought I had to have a good one. Assuming writer did not equal food I equated it with a bad Plan. Lawyer equaled food and money left over for shelter therefore good Plan. Despite the fact that my father repeatedly told me to find something that I loved, my own happiness never factored into my Plan. I just knew that I could be an attorney, that I was capable of doing the work and the schooling because I excelled at difficult but logical things.

Scratch that Plan off the list.

"I Have a Plan"

Contributor: City Girl

No, I don't really. I just like saying that because it brings back fond memories of when my best friend in college said "I have a plan" and it usually pertained to shopping, mixing amazing drinks, or getting into a variety of trouble of the most delicious kind.

Ok, enough digression. Back to the topic at hand. You see, I did have a plan. It really didn't take formation until I left high school to go to college, but it was the college I went to that decided me. I wouldn't exactly say I believe in fate, but I do believe in your options determining the outcome of your life in a very big way. I was accepted to two colleges (painful to admit, but I've never been an honor student, let's be honest) one for English, and one for Theatre. Since I didn't want to live out in the corn for four years, I opted to come out east. And with that, my fate was sealed. I couldn't make up my mind as to what I wanted to do when I left college, so I applied to the strongest fields in my areas of interest at the colleges I wanted to go to. I was accepted into the theatre department at the school I decided on and, voila! Instant plan.

Don't get me wrong. It's not like I looked through a book and was like "hmm...careers, careers...actress, perhaps?" I did really, truly, love acting and the theatre. I still do. I've been on stage since I was 7 years old, and I love the spotlight, the drama, the beauty, the passion...you get the idea. So that was it. I was set on being an actress. I made the decision (much to my parents' grief I assume) that I was going to move to New York City after I graduated to grace the stage with my presence.

So I did. I moved to New York. And then I was like "wow, this is like, hard and shit." No, no, I actually never said that. But I wanted to. My least favorite question went from: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" (As a side note, why don't I get that question anymore? I don't care how old I am. I certainly do not feel grown up, and I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do) to "WOW, you want to be an actress?? How do you DO that?" Um. I dunno. I go to auditions and then they love me and then they put me in a show and then I get an agent and then I make it big and then you see my name in lights I guess. My actual response to this annoyingly recurring question: "I'll let you know when I figure it out." Another all time favorite: "WOW, you want to be an actress? That's SO HARD!" Oh em gee. Really? I had no idea. Waiting for three hours in the pouring rain to audition for a walk on role really did not make that fact sink in. Nor did my mind-numbingly brief, yet much too long, stint working in women's lingerie to pay the rent.

I think my train of thought is getting away from me, so I'll regroup.

Plans I have had from age 5-present:

Actress (recurring)
Teacher (age 8 when I was a huge teacher's pet before I realized I can't stand kids)
Veterinarian (also age 8, before I realized I might have to put cute cats to sleep)
Gene Therapist (I still think this idea is totally cool, but it lasted for all of five minutes)
Therapist (to follow somewhat in my very successful older sister's shoes)
Lawyer (recurring throughout high school, dropped much to my grandfather's disappointement)
Publicist (most recent)

I'm sure there are more, but the theme is clear enough. It's supposed to be ok to waver a bit on the plan when you are in elementary school and your parents think it's oh-so-cute that you want to fly to the moon. Then reality sets in and it is much less cute.

I could ramble on about this for quite a while, about whether I chose acting because it was the one thing I really felt I was good at or because I had come so far I didn't want to let people down by dropping the idea, or about how I am only now just starting to get an idea of what might possibly make me happy for more than five minutes. No, I think I will wait for future entries to delve into that general confusion.

"I have a plan," sounded so much better when it involved buying cute shoes.

The Plan: "... and he became a dentist!"

Contributor: Paralith

When I was in first grade, I said I wanted to be a botanist. Then I found out that a botanist studies plants and that the word I was looking for was zoologist. Then I said I wanted to be a zoologist. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be so confident in my career choice again for more than 15 years.

My first clear memory of the pressure of the Plan comes from my sixth grade home room teacher. He stood next to his desk one day and told us about an old student of his, who had some generic name like Jack. As he spoke, my teacher punctuated every sentence with a wave of his hand.

“Jack always wanted to be a dentist. When people asked him when he was little what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said he wanted to be a dentist. When they asked him in middle school, he said he wanted to be a dentist. When they asked him in high school, he said he wanted to be a dentist. And guess what? He became a dentist!”

I’m sure my teacher then went on to talk about the importance of knowing what you want to be when you grow up, but this is the only part I really remember. And all I could think was, “Well – what if I don’t want to be a dentist? What if I don’t know what I want to be yet?”

My next memory is from one of my eighth grade teachers, a statesman-like elderly black man. He liked to teach us things about the mind and about learning, and would demonstrate from his own books how he would highlight pertinent passages and write notes in the margins. And he was, of course, a fervent supporter of the Plan. He liked to use the word goal. He told us we needed to have goals, to think about them, write them down, plan them out. It sounded like a good idea. Only I didn’t have any goals. And it seemed increasingly important that I find some.

I had been playing piano since I was in elementary school, but in high school I switched to a new teacher. She was a happy, gentle woman, who was quietly but fiercely passionate about the things she loved. She loved children, teaching, her husband, and of course, music. She also had some interesting ideas about spiritual healing, and believed herself to have healed a sick child she passed on the street one day with invisible beams that came out of her eyes. But, in spite of that, she was overall an inspirational woman, and I enjoyed learning from her.

Though she never used words like plan or goal, she still espoused a version of the Plan nonetheless. She told me one day, in her quietly-on-fire voice, how desperately important it was that I follow my passions in life. “Do what you love,” she told me. That was how she found happiness in life, and she wanted the same for me. Her words were lovely and true – but they scared me all the more. I didn’t have any passions. I was a dorky fourteen year old, just trying to keep up my grade point average and maneuver the social morass of high school despite my braces and big bug-eyed glasses. But now I found out that I was also an empty, passion-less person. I could think of nothing that I could heartily and happily embrace for the rest of my life. What was wrong with me? As you may guess, the fact that I was also in full angsty-teenager mode at the time didn’t help matters.

High school continued, and teacher after teacher made their speeches about preparedness, about goals, about the Plan. I became quite bitter about my lack of a Plan. In our junior year English class, we read the play Death of a Salesman, and I got into an argument with another kid in my class about Biff – the 34 year old son of Willy the salesman, who had yet to “find himself” and start a career. “He should have done something by now,” my fellow student said disdainfully. “Oh?” I asked tersely. “Does life have a schedule now? There are rules for when and what you have to have accomplished?”

The argument continued right up until the end of class. “He could have done so many things by now!” the kid objected as the bell rang. “He could have become a doctor!”

“What if you don’t want to be a doctor?” I said as I slung on my backpack, barely keeping the snap out of my voice.

“Why wouldn’t you want to be a doctor?” he said to my back as I walked to the door. “You would be helping people!”

“Well maybe I don’t want to help people!” I said, and walked out of the room.

To this day I’m still pretty bitter when I hear about the Plan. I understand its usefulness when it comes to being prepared for your future career, but I don’t think it should be shoved down your throat from the time you’re eleven. It wasn’t until the end of my junior year in college that my own Plan finally began to take shape in my mind, that I began to feel some of that passion that my piano teacher talked about. And even though I knew grad school was in my future, it wasn’t until a few months ago that I really began to narrow down and define my research interests.

I could write a whole other essay on exactly why it took me so long to find my own Plan, but I think that point is that I am not Jack, a fourteen year old girl is not a fifty year old piano teacher, Biff is not Willy. We’re all different – I know, it’s a hackneyed phrase, but I think its something that my teachers still failed to grasp when it came to preaching about the Plan. Their speeches made me dread the future, not look forward to it.

What do you want to be when you grow up? The pressure of having a Plan.

Call for commentary:

No one has ever gotten away from the "what do you want to be?" question. The only difference is when it turned from idle question into nagging reminder that your life was, as of yet, unfulfilled and you weren't on the Right Track to have a really good Plan.

There's a fabulous quote from the poet James Tate from an essay he wrote on poets/poetry and where his poetic originated:

As a child I was exasperated by the question: 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' Here you are, six years old, you know, trying to put together this little model airplane, and they say, 'What are you going to be?' I just wanted to say, 'I'm going to be seven. Next year I'm going to be eight. Leave me alone ... Whatever it is I'm going to be, let it be a surprise. Or I'd rather be nothing at all. And if you keep asking me this I'm probably just going to be a guy who avoids interviews.'

"The question persisted, but at the age of seven I started getting cagey and hit on an answer that got these people off my back. I told them I was going to be a writer, and that silenced them right away. And I went back to kicking my pet squirrel."

The question we pose: When did "what do you want to be?" go from friendly question to crazy, impossible, unbearable pressure?

The Name: City Girl

Totally self-explanatory. I tried to be all creative and witty, but the inspiration just wasn't coming. So now I am City Girl aka Single and Fabulous in New York. If you want to dig a little deeper into my psyche I will say that as it pertains to The Lost Year, moving to New York City was probably the beginning of when I started to feel so lost in life, even though it was what I wanted for years. The city and I have a love/hate relationship. But it's ok. I'm a bit of a masochist.