Flotsam

I took a year off after high school. Well, I don’t know whether “year off” is the appropriate phrase, as I spent that year waitressing 70 hours a week, but the point is, I was almost twenty by the time I went away to college. At the time, this seemed a positively geriatric age to be when embarking on post-secondary education. I developed a bit of a complex—a Jaleesa Complex.
If you retain as much useless information as I do, you will remember that Jaleesa was one of Denise Huxtable’s roommates on A Different World. She was older. Much older. As in divorced, and subtly unhip. While Denise and the Marisa Tomei character–and even the emotionally constipated Whitley—wore youthful outfits often involving leggings or suspenders (or both!), Jaleesa was larger, with short hair she probably liked because it didn’t need styling. While Denise flitted around campus in some hammer-pants/dashiki combo, Jaleesa stayed home to study–even the absurdly spectacled Dwayne Wayne seemed to pity her.

Sure, Jaleesa was part of their crowd, but somehow she was always more den mother than partner in crime, and I was certain I was destined to follow in the footsteps of her flat, sensible shoes.
Coupled with my love of reading and vaudevillian sense of humor, surely my age would render me ever-so-slightly out-of-step with my peers.

Age was again one of my concerns when I decided to return to college now, seven years later. The idea of discussing my study plans with a passel of smooth-skinned teens who were just discovering such potentially irritating topics as Marxism and French feminists—well, it doesn’t appeal to me. If Ignorance is never discussing Foucault with someone for whom I could have babysat, than truly, it is Bliss.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. Part of the benefit of choosing a program designed by hippies high on educational reform and interdisciplinary independent study is that said programs seem to attract wonky scholarly types over forty. The sheer volume of work required tends to discourage those who love the nightlife. “Nightlife,” for me, ends at 10:30, and my evening schedule is long-since free of first dates, which leaves plenty of time to study.

So, I am enjoying school. Loving it, even. The professor I have chosen to work with this semester has her PhD in Endocrinology with specialties in Reproductive Physiology and Biobehavioral Studies. {Ed. Note: I may or may not have whimpered with pleasure when this fact was revealed.} Because I was unaware of either my delight in or aptitude for science until recently, I stayed away from it during my first bout with college. This semester provides the perfect opportunity to combine my writing work with some delicious endocrinology—I am writing reflective essays on the social and endocrinological aspects of maternal desire, pseudocyesis, and post-partum depression.
Mmm. Sweet, sweet behavioral endocrinology.

However, my schedule continues to make me consider taking my own life. It has also given me new respect for Jaleesa, and a rather potent hatred of my youthful self.
When I was in college the first time, completing my work seemed a nigh impossible task. I had to read and write papers, and yet they wanted me to attend actual classes as well? What did they think I was, some super-efficient study robot?
Of course, I didn’t have a job, at the time.
Or, really, any extracurricular responsibilities save spending my monthly allowance and thinking of creative ways to consume marijuana.

Now I work fifty hours a week at my day job, and still manage to pack my apartment into boxes, attend doctor’s appointments, console my manic father, AND complete all of my schoolwork in a timely fashion. Of course, I am also prone to sudden fits of uncontrollable whimpering, but I suppose you can’t have it all.

College is wasted on the young.