End of an Era
12 Nov
Undergraduate life as I know it will cease in exactly 19 days. The countdown began months ago when I first sat down with a giant OmniOutliner Pro file, listed every single module I had ever taken and found out… if I ditched my economics double major I could graduate by the 1st of December this year, about six months ahead of schedule. I expected to be nothing short of elated — my opinion on the education I received is no secret. (With a qualification: if I had to stay in this country, it would still be here; which doesn’t say very much at all).
With 19 days to go, I’m having second thoughts. I made some wonderful friends here, and truth be told I did meet an above average proportion of fellow students who were extraordinarily talented, overachieving sorts, some of whom I have the good fortune to be friends with. They were musicians, entrepreneurs, journalists, NGO types, photographers, web developers, dancers, stock market whizzes, financial planning geniuses, among the many hats they wore; all of whom were also humble people who cared about the world, people who gave a damn, people who were shining beacons at very top levels in their respective industries, regionally and internationally, in addition to being full time undergraduate students. I thrived in that environment not from competition, but from mutual encouragement.
Everything else. The coerced corporate culture, with our compulsory resume/interview/etiquette classes; the narrow ideas of success. You can’t sit down anywhere in SMU without hearing have you applied for the Citigroup job, how much is Merrill offering you, what they’re offering you JUST FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. You can’t sit down anywhere in SMU without having SMU tell you 100% of our students got jobs before graduation! x% of them have a starting salary of $5000! y% of them have a starting salary of $10 000! Big, hairy deal. If you don’t like it, I hear you say, why don’t you just ignore it? You can’t: it’s shoved down your throat every chance they have. Even if you hardly go to school, and go with blinders on and ears closed (as you would, after all that listening to inane, pointless class participation. side note: one year in etiquette class, somebody said, “prof, what’s the maximum number of peas I can put on my fork?”)… there’s no escaping.
What I will miss: the weeks 11-15 rush (like the present Week 13 craziness), writing papers at 2am at the school library, the stuff we got up to in the Group Study Rooms (like, study), the ‘Pick and Bite’ gang, the before/after school cafe/restaurant/bar trips, the fact that we get 30% off beers at the Ice Cold Beer on campus.
The tragic part is, as most of the seniors would agree, the school never used to be like this. Something changed dramatically, around the same time (1) we moved to the city campus (2) we drastically expanded the intake. The SMU I knew once was enough to make me voluntarily become a SMU Advocate when I was asked to (don’t laugh); I now feel sorry I put countless people through this, this ridiculously competitive I’m doing so badly at school, my GPA is only 3.9, I’m so different because I come from SMU environment. I’m not elated to leave, but it is definitely bittersweet.
Bittersweet too, because what comes next is presently a blur. At some point next fall, graduate school, hopefully in New York City. Before that, either work that will take me to Northeast India, Bhutan, the Middle East, Turkey, Syria, Europe et al (yes all of it and all at a shot). Or work that will put me in New York three months ahead of schedule. Or work that will see me writing the script for an exciting project; or work that is all of the above combined. All of which will take me away from home as I know it for as long as I want it to be, i.e. a very long time. You can look forward to it all your life but when push comes to shove, and changes occur on this magnitude, and all at the same time, changes in every domain of your life too — geography, romance, career, status — you can’t help but feel excited and overwhelmed, figuring it out, pretending you know what you’re doing, making the most out of the time remaining.
Growing up sucks.
