I am Charlotte Simmons
I am Charlotte Simmons.
I am. It's delightfully reassuring that an author can embody my
initial college experience so felicitously as through the character of Miss
Charlotte Simmons, a backwoods prodigy attending the famed Dupont University. I
am hardly a prodigy, and I come from an average sized town with its fair share
of famed individuals and national headline making events, but my original birth
path was not obviously to go to college and wasn't an easy financial commitment
either. Yet I made it, like Charlotte, through hard work and
a little bit of brains, and as the apprehension mounted over the summer, so did
the anticipation of all of the wonderful opportunities that UT Austin would
afford me. At UT, I would "find people like [myself], people who actually
have a life of the mind, people whose concept of the future is actually something
beyond Saturday night..." (360). That's not to say I didn't have friends
that were compatible to my sensibilities; that's to say Victoria Texas, home of
80,000 people, a messed up court system and screwball politics, is not the sort
of place where your mind can be cultivated, challenged, and most of all
supported.
I can still conjure up the uneasy excitement I felt all summer,
this wonderful illusion of something better than myself, an experience too
difficult to articulate that left people staring blankly and smiling while
recalling their yesteryears at Amazing University. I knew that there are
many stereotypes about universities and these stereotypes transcend any
specific college, and I know people party and drink and roll out of bed late
and skip classes and college students are slovenly and selfish and
self-centered and bombastic and esoteric, but UT Austin was different to me
that summer.
And now, here I am. UT Austin, I've decided, is not significantly
different than any other large university. Admitting this deadens some of the
rosy feelings I initially had about going off to Austin. But it's the honest truth;
UT is very similar to that prescribed college experience, the stereotype that
inspires blockbuster movies. I found it surprising and telling that this Dupont University, in all its grandeur,
its beautiful architecture, and its beautiful landscaping sounded no different
than the beautiful works around UT Austin campus. UT has created this little
superficial world of beautifully kept lawns and maintained architecture,
"so artfully contrived", and yet one step off onto the main drag, the
streets are dotted with beggars and homeless people. All the while, we college
students, in our own special world, our "charming aristocracy"
champion our football team and long forgotten philosophers whose statues happen
to look nice (355, 354). Our great tower, the clock, this symbol of education
and societal advancement, is much like "Trinity's loquacious clock"
which "never let the quarters, night or day, slip by him
unproclaimed" (373). Are these superficial structures and carefully
plotted natural blueprints what people find so wonderful about college, about
UT, about any university?
I particularly related to Charlotte on move in day. She
moves into "the first dormitory ever built at Dupont" and similarly,
I live in Littlefield, UT's first dorm (365). And
though the furnishings in Littlefield are very beautiful, gothic, immaculate,
and very much a representation of the fantastical architecture found around
campus, the rooms are a painful juxtaposition— small, drab, "worn and
exhausted" (367). Moving in was a frightful experience that Charlotte and I shared.
"What on earth were her new classmates bringing in all those boxes, and
what did she lack?" (365). I couldn't say it better myself. And it isn't
just in terms of personal belongings, although I feel a bit resentful of the
prized possessions many students bring along, their laptops, iPods, and move-in
care packages filled with months of food that their parents took the time to
invest in. There's this familiarity with college living, or perhaps just young
adult living, that I just don't get. This language to subscribe to and the
outings and parties I should be attending— it's a clumsy process. I see myself
paralleled in Charlotte as she "remained
standing by the window, imagining she could hear the songs of other students'
happiness heading off into the unimaginable world of "going out" (369). I
wander from class to class in a haze, picking up fragments of conversations
reliving the night before and I see classmates, my classmates, bonding with
each other and talking about the studying they did together the night before
and I see these friendships cropping up and I see myself trying to rationalize
my lack of assimilation. Much in the ways college movies depict the drunken
antics and the slovenly lifestyle of college students, Charlotte and I decided
that "they can go on living from impulse to impulse" (369).
And yet this high and mighty attitude that helps me sleep at night
is still another thing I dislike about college. Like Charlotte, I too have
began my assimilation, but not by cleverly using the word "fuck" as
cuss words were already a significant part of my vocabulary. There's something
special about being a college student, a revered and respected endeavor that
makes your parents proud and gives you a stamp of approval from society. Even
more so, there's something awe-inspiring about being Plan II. In my Media
Studies class Monday, we talked about the sense of community that reading
best-selling and even philosophical books can create among individuals. The
same goes for movies. I find it quite funny and telling1 that I have seen only
one of the top 16 college movies, and have read very few books to top it off,
and I'm left out of conversations involving them. It's like a secret club,
where only a select few are privy to the exclusive knowledge contained within
this media. Just in this way, being apart of Plan II creates this sense of
being special. "What college will you go to" leads into the question what's
your major, and then the hesitant, but happy confession of Plan II, and admitting this speaks volumes (356). And as much as
I want to maintain my modesty, I revel in the exclusivity, and only those in
Plan II know the feeling, and it's a "treasured feeling (356).
And then, it all comes back to this summer before UT Austin, the
summer that I "was very much a star." Sure I didn't make a 1600 on my
SAT like Charlotte, but I had my fair
share of newspaper time in the local Victoria Advocate (359). And I was going
to college, I was admitted to an exclusive Liberal Arts Honors Program and I
received a scholarship... and I was heading off to this elusive dream world
that is college, "a castle in the air" (365). I'm very much lost and
sort of disappointed. Peaceful evening walks through campus are interrupted by
drunken frat boys and rowdy football fans. Intellectual conversations about
Aristotle and Homer float teasingly over my head. The clock tower strikes midnight, and sends reverberations
through the city— a battle cry, a taunt. Come join the club, if you can.
