Name: that part was easy. Date of birth: June, 1989, which made me a few months short of my 25th birthday the first time I applied to transfer to a 4-year university. A lot older than my perfect cousin, who at my age was a college graduate and a newlywed, and eons older than my mother who at 24 had been married for 3 years and in a whole new country.
No, not me. I was still living in the same house where I had my 5th birthday and only a few feet away from my childhood bedroom. Where had I gone wrong? I wanted to escape and see the world. College was my answer except I was still at a community college 7 years after my high school graduation, and I would be there one more.
This story doesn’t have a happy ending so if you are looking for that I’m sure you will find it on some of the other pages. You have now officially been warned.
I had one more class to finish in order to transfer, and unlike thousands of other college students crashing classes I had been able to enroll properly and looked upon my fellow classmates as they each pleaded their case as to why the instructor should sign their add card and not someone else. 15 weeks later I no longer saw their faces, not because they had been unsuccessful in enrolling, but because I had quit.
So close yet so far. My letter of acceptance from the California State University haunts me. Why had I quit? The day my letter came should have been the best day since I found out that I had passed my statistics course. But yet, I cringed. How would I tell those closest to me that I had failed again?
Why didn’t I have fight in me left? In all honesty? Because I don’t know what to do with my life. I would have bet money on the fact that by the time I got to this point, to the point of transferring that I would know my major. I know that I had worked hard for years on the school’s newspaper and magazine, in fact I was editor-in-chief of the magazine, but to say with full certainty that I was a journalism major?????? That, I couldn’t. My major was undecided. I felt like one of those people that climb the high dive and don’t jump. I couldn’t jump.
I took the cowards way out and failed so that I wouldn’t have to leave, and buying myself more time at the community college. Finding myself. I don’t even believe it as I type it. I don’t know myself.
There are days that I wish things were like the book The Giver, where you are told what to become, and how to feel. I envy kids who know what they want to be when they grow-up, because that’s the hard part.
So I guess I’m putting my quarter in the game of community college and playing another round of “let’s pick a major.”
Signed,
Future member of the class of 2100.