Amanda Jones

Teach me to Live!

The Future was always a distant and vague concept on the horizon of my thoughts. I felt that, somehow, I would know when I was “grown up” and a “mature adult,” ready for a career and having a plan or goals for the rest of my life. But this assumption has been challenged a lot recently. I hear about people my age, or just a few years older, getting married, and I think, “No way am I ready for that. I’ll be ready for that later, when I’m all grown up.” But when will that be? I’m having to face the reality that there isn’t going to be a magical moment when I suddenly turn into a ‘real’ adult. Life-changing decisions like careers, goals, and marriage – I will have to make them all like I make decisions now, without an assurance of success or knowledge that I’m making the correct choice.

This scares me – a lot! I had always hoped that when I ‘was older’ (vague future, again) I would know exactly what I wanted to do for a career and who I was as a person. There are people whose “dreams [are] as gigantic as [their] surroundings [are] small,” who grow up with few privileges and yet are so driven by their desire and inner passion that they go on to do great things (Hardy 651). What I wouldn’t give to have that kind of passion for something! I hated applying for scholarships and the like because they all seemed to ask about what your dream/goal/plan was for the future, and I had no clue. I felt so…under-achieving. While other people were going to college to get the degree that would allow them to do what they wanted to do, I felt like I was going to college just to figure out what it was I wanted to do in the first place. I fervently hoped that college would be that secluded sanctuary of learning….like Jude, I almost gave it a holy or magical quality, dreaming that I would find all my answers there (just like I thought I would know all the answers when I ‘grew up’). I thought that college would “Teach me to live, that I may dread/ The grave as little as my bed./ Teach me to die…” (Hardy 659). It was simple logic – going to college = automatically learning who you are.

I know now that this isn’t the case. College can provide me with opportunities for great and wonderful things, including learning a lot about who I am and what I want to do, but it will not magically turn me into a grown-up who knows exactly what they’re plan is for life. I do find comfort in the fact that those opportunities are there, though (a blessing Jude never experienced). The rest is up to me – to work, to play, to take a chance, to learn. I just pray that I find myself up to the daunting task, when it is so easy to complacently float along in the degree-getting plan.