No More Mother May I

College C

Eye of the Storm

Dirty Walls and Starry Night Blue

I am a college student. I have all the symptoms. I reside on the campus of a four year accredited university. On this campus, I live in what have been previously referred to as dorms but which I have been assured are actually residence halls. I am enrolled at this before mentioned university and have even been known to attend, on occasion, what are commonly referred to as classes. At precisely eleven and five every single day, I line up with others of my station and cheerfully subject myself to the vilest representation of food I have encountered in my life thus far. At night, after several hours of video games, I crawl across one bed to my bottom bunk. I rest easily to the nighttime serenade of my roommates' snoring, humming, chatting, and occasional screaming. I have no doubts about what I am.

A lot of people go to college; however, it takes a special breed to actually BE a college student. The College Student knows how to fit in 47 rounds of GoldenEye 64 before studying. She knows that you can easily write a five-page essay with sources seven minutes before class. She counts out days until Thanksgiving Break before doing laundry. She eats, drinks, and lives college, not for it's education in academics but its lessons in life.

It's a dangerous world, a college campus. You need to be prepared to take on the best and worst that today's high schools and colleges have to offer. Don't go in empty handed. There are a number of attributes I would personally consider a prerequisite to any attempts at taking on this full time lifestyle. Without these traits, the campus will eat you alive.

Let's start with ambition. Ambition is a funny thing, yet desperately important if you want to make a go at college. My greatest goal in life is to remain a student as long as humanly possible. Having a dream, a goal, a desire for something better, that's ambition. Often times, it's what takes us to an institute of higher learning to begin with. You don't often find a college student who wants nothing more than to peddle burgers at a fast food chain for the rest of her life. A little ambition will at least get you started, ambition and possibly a little intelligence. 

Intelligence is not absolutely required; however, it will make your experience a great deal easier. I'm not talking Einstein here, just the ability to do more mentally than nod and drool. Don't be discouraged if you are of the nod-and-drool variety, I did say it wasn't required. The very point behind a college education is to learn, and you will. I don't even refer to myself as intelligent aside from my morning pep talks in front of the bathroom mirror. What you're lacking in intelligence can always be made up in inventiveness. 

In order to be true a college student, you absolutely have to be inventive. Today's college student is the modern day MacGyver. I have done more with a coffeepot than George Washington Carver did with the peanut. This is when it truly comes down to survival of the fittest. Essentially the university gives you a living space the size of a postage stamp and a list of things you can't have and says "Here, make it home." This brings us to our next attribute, tolerance.

Perhaps even more important than inventiveness is a high tolerance. No, I'm not talking about the ability to consume excessive amounts of alcohol. I'm referring to a general ability to put up with anything life throws at you. In college, this means nothing short of having your limbs removed slowly by a deranged and psychotic RA bothers you. I will forever be amused by the irony behind the word "room." Room in some way implies space, or you know, room, of which there is none that I am aware of. My "space" in my "room" can be likened to that of a passenger traveling steerage class on the Titanic. Not only am I doomed from the start, I have no where to put my feet. This, however, doesn't annoy me. I am no longer disturbed by the image of a very naked, very hairy posterior first thing in the morning. Sleeping in a bed with three other people doesn't get to me. Coming home to find someone I've known less than two weeks using my computer, my Nintendo, and my stereo while their friends are trying on my shoes and laying in my bed munching on my last bag of Chex Mix doesn't phase me. I have learned to accept absolutely everything, however this does not mean I am a pushover. It is important to find the right balance between tolerance and independence.

Independence is tricky. You have to know when to stand on your own two feet and when to admit you can't do it alone. A basic knowledge of ironing, sewing, and laundry without having to run home to mommy every weekend is critical. You also need to realize that as long as you are a true college student, unemployed, you do need your parents. When I first arrived on campus, I thought I was finally free. Three credit cards later, I realized my parents really aren't that bad. Sitting patiently on the phone for their daily regime of yelling, I also learned the final attribute. 

You can master all of the other five traits, but if you don't have perseverance, you'll never become the true student you're striving to be. Sure, you don't mind the hairy ass now, but will you in a month? Perseverance is waking up to that same hairy rear every day for three months and still having the sanity to suspend a new set of shelves in your closet using only duct tape. It is the dividing line between lasting the year and pulling out at semester. Perseverance separates the College Student from the I-took-some-college-classes. Plus it keeps it interesting.

Only three months in, I can already say it has been an interesting trip at least and educational at most. The College Student experience is more what you learn about yourself than anything taught in the classroom. You may never again need to know the inventor of the camera; however, you'll use your newly found culinary abilities forever. I wonder if that's what college is for, not to prepare us for the real world academically, but mentally. Whatever it's purpose, it is an integral part of who I am and all that I strive to achieve not to mention the intense relief of my roommate finally breaking up with the unusually hairy ass.