If there’s such thing as a mid-life crisis, then surely other smaller segments of life contain mid-crises. Therefore, if college is a segment of time, then the mid-college crisis, as I’ve seen it unfold around me, is both real and prevalent. If/then statements.
Processions of logic to demarcate a thoroughly illogical thought process: the idea that, somehow, whatever you’re doing at 19, or 20, or however old you are in your second semester of your sophomore year of college, is not acceptable or impressive or conducive to “real life” things.
My roommate burst into our room yesterday exuding an aura of faint panic. She had a computer science test tomorrow; she never goes to class because she doesn’t find the in-class instruction to be helpful; and, anyway, what does she even want to do with her life? Why, she asked me, was she taking computer science? I countered by asking what, exactly, you did in a computer science exam.
I pictured a windowless room with rows of computers, illuminating the distressed faces of hundreds of young coders. My roommate once told me that you could write hundreds of lines of code and, if one letter was wrong, none of it would work.
You would have to comb through the existing lines, looking for the errant symbol. I was baffled. Was it actually possible that anyone, anywhere, would ever want to do that with their time? I couldn’t answer her question, and she couldn’t really answer mine, either.
More importantly, though, can I answer my own questions about my personal aspirations? I recently read “The Idiot,” an excellent novel by Elif Batuman. In it, Batuman writes, “Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my ever having written anything, or being able to ever imagine writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.”
I literally gasped when I read that line. I didn’t think anyone else felt like that — like they could, and would, write, but had no idea what to write about, or who would ever want to read their musings for more than 100 lines. I underlined it and recopied it in my journal.
Am I a writer because I write for myself, by myself, in a journal that no one will ever read? Can I consider myself a writer if I’ve never written anything for publication? I DON’T KNOW. I don’t know what I’m doing or who I’m doing it for. I guess, to be fair, at this point, no one really knows.
On a whim, I took German my first year of college. Now, almost two years later, I’m planning on living, working and learning in Berlin for seven months. This comforts me. A seemingly inconsequential or aimless choice eventually dictated where and how I would spend seven months of my life. Maybe, if I keep making enough random, authentic choices, they’ll lead me, eventually, to the place I’m supposed to end up. Where exactly is that, though?
