I was nervous driving back to campus. As the minutes ticked by on the storied six-hour drive from New Hampton, New Hampshire, to Princeton, New Jersey, the uneasiness in my chest bubbled and grew. It simmered out of my mouth in fragmented and effusive parcels of conversation that only my immediate family usually have the pleasure of experiencing. As I rambled through the ideas, uncertainties and excitements that jostled for a position within my mind and worked their ways out into the over-crowded air of our car, my Mom sat quietly, listening and knowing me all too well.
What was it going to be like going back this time? On some levels, I knew. I knew exactly what to expect, actually. I would arrive and stretch out my restless legs. My Mom (the saint that she is) would patiently assist me. As we labored and sweated, hauling all of my unorganized belongings up old stairs that have never known the luxury of air conditioning and have been trodden upon by feet far wiser than mine. We would rearrange my room at least 4 times and, in the process, I would probably come very close to dropping and breaking my fish tank. It would all be the same. The same process that had come to signify the beginning for me: The beginning of a new year of school.
When I was younger, the process of beginning was marked by the time honored tradition of rambunctiously careening my body down the lunchbox aisle at Wal-Mart, racing my younger brother, all the while carefully and meticulously trying to decide which lunch box was best suited to accompany me to classes that year. Was I too old for Pooh Bear this year? Was pink or purple better? Were they sure they didn’t have a lunch box with a special compartment specifically for strawberries?
I can’t really remember when exactly these hallmarks of beginnings changed, but maybe that’s because I was always beginning the same thing. This is the last year that I am guaranteed to begin a new year of school. Yes, maybe I’ll go on to graduate school but it certainty isn’t certain that I will do so. It’s the beginning of the end, the end of a guaranteed trajectory. Up until now, there has been a map for progression, but this is my last mapped out step. It’s terrifying and electrically exciting. What comes after second grade? Third grade. What comes after freshman year? Sophomore year. And what comes after senior year of college? The answer to this is both abundantly full and terrifyingly empty. In some ways, everything can be the answer, but in others nothing really is. There are innumerable options, and I suppose there always were, but the most popular and right option has previously always been so scripted. You stay in school, because that’s what we do here. That’s how you become a grown up.
Well, here I am hurtling towards an era where there are no more scripted steps for how to become a grown up. What does that even mean? Am I just spoke to drive away, pack up my fish-bowl and carry all my belongings down those stairs who have said goodbye to so many trying-to-be-grown-ups and become a certified grown up, myself? There is still so much I don’t know.
But I suppose what I’m really doing is heading towards learning the things a scripted trajectory can’t teach you. I think that’s what being or becoming a grown up really is. It’s learning how to define your own trajectory, without the help of external structures, like the Carbondale Community School, Newfound Middle School, New Hampton School or Princeton University. It’s getting up and brushing your teeth and tying your shoes and unpacking your fish tank and packing your lunch box and going off to do a thing or travel to a place that you, more than anyone else, decide, is the right one.
