College Withdrawal begins

As I left for college and when I was in college, people would often tell me that college was the greatest time of their lives. Some would recollect fondly on the learning or the emotional growth. Others would grin as they described it with vagaries, though I could almost envision the keggers they were remembering silently. There was, of course, the occasional advice about "hooking up with a lot of girls" because college is the time for that. The people who suggested the latter hadn't actually been to college, now that I think about it.

Pessimist that I am, when I was in college I would often ask recent graduates if they missed college, trying to prepare for the inevitable fallout after college. “Yes...but I don’t miss the tests and papers,” was the common rejoinder. I would chuckle and nod. Yes, that must be nice.

But now I'm done with college....and I miss the papers and tests.

There was something inherently satisfying of trying very hard to achieve a goal and being evaluated based upon my labors. In high school, I would study very hard for the college board tests in order to get into good schools. In college, I would work hard for papers and tests...not because I necessarily wanted a good grade or wanted to get into a great graduate school, but because I wanted to learn the material. This is still true of my learning. But I also wanted the immediate satisfaction—or disappointment—of seeing my work evaluated. Of seeing the fruits of my labor.


I suppose this is why some people go to graduate school and never leave...

There is no longer someone standing over me with a carrot dangling from a stick, encouraging me to learn. Or perhaps there is. I want to maintain my dignity in front of my students, to know the material well enough to answer their questions. This is not so much of carrot in front of a stick as a man with a hickory stick threatening to beat me if I don’t learn and learn fast enough to present to the class I have in thirty minutes. I learn out of fear now.

In my role as a teacher, I expect to see a few small progressions in students. Perhaps a student will learn to craft a thesis. If I’m lucky, a student may see the value in history. Yet I will never see most of the results of my current labors. In fifteen years, a former student might think of me vaguely when he remembers to put a comma before a coordinating conjunction. But the immediate satisfaction—what often keeps me going—is gone. I want to be rewarded, and I wanted to know that there is an end to my labors and an end to my trying to read and write obsessively during my free time (emphasize “trying”). I want to take all the knowledge that my curiosity has led me to accrue and synthesize it into a greater work. I have hopes of writing a novel and publishing poetry and essays...but there is no guarantee. Though they pale in comparison, school tests and essays provided a guaranteed reader and conversation partner—even if only one. I have listeners now....but they don't really listen. They stare mindlessly at the screen and take notes or talk in the background, surreptitiously texting on their cell phones.