Life

I realized earlier today that I have, without much sentiment, moved on to the college phase.  When I began to considerate my position logically, it was strange that I wasn't facing another year of high school, or even another year of "regular" school.  Next year, I am going to college, and it is ten hours away from home and I have chosen to go on studying.

It was an odd sensation.  Suddenly, it dawned on me that I did not have to go to college.  I had never fully considered the possibility, and in recent years, I have been a firm advocate of the value of education.  Certainly, until recently, I thought I wanted to be a teacher, and although I looked into options outside of a college degree, it only made sense to go to college.  And the most logical thing to do in order for my current interests is to go to college, so far as I can see.  Yet, for the first time in a long time, learning... is completely an option.

And what is four years of college?  It only took four years to get through high school, and I have lived four cycles of four years.  I don't know what to do with my life, but hopefully, at the end of four years, with career counseling, I will have a career option before me.  And then....

But it is so strange not to be picking courses with my parents, planning how early I'm going to start this year, and looking forward to getting the boxes in the mail full of crisp and heavenly-smelling tomes of knowledge.  All the power has been stripped from me, and now, not only will I be interacting with a race called humans, I will be sleeping with members of their race that I don't know.  And I am such a home-bound person that my home and family are my life.  Yet I am willing - nay, compelled to travel a day's journey across my continent.  Why didn't I chose the local college, the community college, or even the private college only a few hours hours away?  Strange, is it not?

It is not so strange when one considers that my top criteria for my college included a strong and safe Catholic community.  Anyway, God provides.  One of my most recent concerns, stemming from my experience at University Day, was rooming with someone who, no pride present, was below me in maturity.  However, I was placed together with a transferring sophomore, and it seems, though it is really too early to say definitely, like we could get along well in one room together.  But I am very quiet in the morning - slow, sluggish.  Although I am very much awake most mornings and even at my most productive, my capacity to interact with other people before nine, at the earliest, leaves much to be desired.

So why, in the name of all things red ripe tomato, am I moving to a place ten hours from home to study something when I do not even want a career but a family of my own?!?!

Well, one good thing - I have shared a room for several years now, more than it feels like.  A bigger room, granted, but I've seen the rooms in the dormitories, and I have been assigned to one that is newer.

My sister is now contemplating not going to college.  If I know my sister - and I know my sister - she will probably come to the same conclusion I have and go to college to learn something at levels that no one around here can teach her.  But if I know my sister - and I know my sister - she may also go the totally unconventional routes and skip college.  She, like me, does not have much interest in a career, but rather is interested in having a family I think, and she is already totally devoted to her love of writing novels.

So, this is a rather long post just to put down in writing that I felt a strange feeling as I realized that school as I knew it is officially over.  That graduation ceremony in Virginia was not enough to signify this change of events, not by a long shot.  Granted, it was a long ride, expensive, my father did not make us bring the camper as he threatened, I got a diploma and there was even a prom, and I came back with a lingering and recurring pinch in my shoulder, but it was all too easy and done.  It was such a little thing for the end and beginning of my life.

Every time I see someone, they ask me if I have begun packing yet.  Heh, I'm like no - buzz off.  They act like I should be ready to go, on call, waiting for a pager to call me at any time to go off to college.  SWEET BABY CARROTS, IT'S ONLY JUNE!!!  Gimme a break.  I've got tons of money in my pockets and very little that needs actual buying.  Mostly, I just need to collect stuff together, and I'm very efficient in that regard - I see no urgent need to start now.

Uh.......  Again, a "rather long post just to put down in writing that I felt a strange feeling as I realized that school as I knew it is officially over."

You were able to follow my ramblings?  Interesting.

~Meggy