I have known College for two years now. I know that may not seem very long, but it seems like an eternity to me. Not that I don’t like College or anything, because I really do. It just seems like the past two years have gone by at lackadaisical speed. You see College and I may have our vast differences. We make each other homesick, we exhaust each other, we anger each other with the choice of tortuous Professors. However, what I learned from my relationship with College is that while I suffer, I whine, and I cry, I also embrace the suck.
Embracing homesickness is not an easy feat. When I’m missing home, I miss the aroma of spices, my mother’s bittersweet scent of oud and the warmth that comes with being in my haven. As the youngest child in the family, I regret scolding my parents about my adulthood, instead of letting them treat me like the baby that I really am inside. I even miss the moments when we are all reposed at the dining room table, and while my mother either rebukes my lack of interest in the food or chastises me when I am a little too invested in it. Now I am faced with an empty, graying apartment, with no sounds, scents or screaming.
I clasp on to the memories with my sister discussing the silliest things like deciding who lives in our fantastical harem of men,debating who has dibs on Tom Hiddleston or Henry Cavill. I reminisce about our intellectual literary conversations, involving Jane Eyre’s need to leave Thornwood to search for her own independence, respective of Rochester. Even sharing our deepest and most secret desires, I miss doing that.
While my father is not an emotional man, but epitomizes the stereotypical macho persona, I miss his insight, our discussions, his teetering affection, and most of all his smile. While my father and I can have conversations that could last days, our exchange of knowledge about politics, philosophy and religion is so vast, that it might as well be College’s core all rolled into one.
College, while you do exhaust me, knowing that by the time I get home fatigue hits me like an unexpected wave, I tend to push and neglect all of your work until the next day, or prefer to procrastinate on account of my drained brain power. Now, that’s not saying that you’re toxic for me, I’m just saying that maybe you should lighten up the load a little bit and be considerate of, oh I don’t know, that we might be taking other classes. But, still I sometimes do appreciate the load. Because after you make a to do list on that friday night and go through the weekend crossing things of it, there is a feeling of satisfaction that lifts my spirit and my energy so high that I’m ready for the next round of homework. All because I embraced the suck of homesickness, workload and sinuous professors, all of whom I have adored.
But then there are those students. Those students that refuse to embrace the suck. Those students who think that partying truly is the answer to everything. The students that I’m talking about go through College thinking that a drink in hand and a pingpong ball in the other is the answer to a truly great college experience-- thank you Hollywood. Almost every single day of the week with respect to Sunday, they are drinking, dancing, regurgitating the alcohol in their system, and having sex. Not that I’m against these bon-vivant’s, because I’m not. As a I best friend of mine always says, “you do you, girl.”. But what really sends fumes of anger spurting out of ears, is these same students are the ones who complain most about their grades, which I find quite confusing. Thier deflated grades doesn’t come as a surprise to me but to them, it most assuredly does. And while that happens, for 20 year old people like me who act like the 70 year olds we actually are, shake our heads in disappointment, purse our lips and steer clear of these party goers, all the while asking ourselves where these students get this gigantic bout of energy.
And even then we embrace the suck. Yes, I miss you mom, dad and sister. Yes, I miss you home, food and lifestyle. Yes, I miss being relaxed, undisturbed and disorganized. But, College, I have embraced you and while sometimes you may be impossible, I wouldn’t trade you for the world. I am finding myself in you, I am becoming independent because of you, and I know the true worth of quality work thanks to you. So College, thank you for making me embrace the suck, and putting me on the path of the person that I have always dreamed of becoming.
Here’s to embracing the suck.