Endless Possibility

I had lunch with a former student today. M. had agreed to visit my Senior Thesis class and do her thesis presentation for them, so they could hear what a really good presentation sounds like, and then to talk about her process for completing that project. She was smart and articulate and encouraging to the students who came to hear her, just as I'd hoped she would be. I took her out for Chinese food afterward--as a gesture of appreciation, but also because I enjoy her company. We've met for coffee every few months since her graduation.

This afternoon, we spent most of our time talking about her recent break-up with the man she's been dating since she was 17. It's tempting to think of that as a childhood romance, but the relationship lasted five years--longer than a lot of marriages these days (five times longer than my brother's first marriage, actually.) She'd been struggling to end that relationship for some time, but it's tricky when you're living with the person you don't want to be with anymore. And then there's the matter of guilt: women are not programmed to think about themselves. We're taught to be careful of others' feelings, not to make trouble, to be self-sacrificing above all else. It was really difficult for M. to take a moment and think about herself.

But she did it, and I'm proud of her, and I told her so. Rather than doing the easy thing, she did the difficult thing on behalf of herself. And now she's making a plan for taking the next steps toward the future she wants to have: finding her own place to live, researching grad schools, taking the GRE. It's scary to be completely responsible for yourself, but it's exhilarating too.

I spent much of this afternoon thinking about my first year in grad school. I moved to Kansas from Idaho without knowing a soul; I drove cross-country in my little Chevette packed full of my wordly possessions. (I still marvel at the fact that I made it across the Rockies in a little economy car that went 40 mph on those inclines.) I did this because I had a fellowship that offered me a chunk of money when I arrived and a teaching assistantship that would pay the bills while I was in school. I was homesick, of course, but I'd expected that; I was homesick when I went away to college, too, and I was only six hours from home then. For the first six months of grad school, I consoled myself with the thought that if it got too bad, I could drive straight home in 24 hours. By this time tomorrow, I could be sitting in my parents' living room became my mantra.

I thought about dropping out of grad school many, many times. But, for whatever reason, I didn't. I made new friends, found that I really enjoyed my graduate classes (once I got through the first semester, during which I was stuck in the courses that had low enrollments--meaning, in other words, the least popular classes with the most difficult professors.) Eventually, I connected with a group of people I really loved, many of whom are still my friends today.

Before I got to that point, though, there were moments of real difficulty. There were language barriers and culture clashes--yes, even between Kansas and Idaho. The student union building was the Union, not the SUB--the first time I asked someone for directions to the SUB, I got a look that suggested I was potentially dangerous. I'd never heard locusts in the trees before, and when I asked my new roommate "What is making all that noise?" I got a blank look in return. She didn't even hear what was absolutely deafening to me.

I didn't know that, in the Midwest, it stays hot all night long. The first time I opened my windows at 10 o'clock, expecting a cool breeze, I was stunned to find that it still felt like high noon. I didn't know that walking outside in the rain without an umbrella was going to leave me soaked to the skin in a matter of minutes. In Idaho, it can rain for three days without accumulating a full inch.

A lot of the time, I felt like I was existing on a separate plane, all by myself. There were new brand names to learn at the grocery store and new stores to navigate. There were tornado sirens tested at noon once a week. The list of things I had to learn keeps on going, but the point is that learning it all at once, all alone, was overwhelming.

And exciting, too.

I sympathize with M.'s conflicted feelings of excitement and anxiety. I've been there; I know how it feels to have your whole life in your own two hands, to be solely responsible for yourself. But I told her today to enjoy that feeling: "This is the only time in your life when you'll be able to do anything you want," I said. "You aren't tied to a mortgage or a career or a marriage--anything is possible. That's a wonderful thing."

It's scary to look into that horizon of endless possibility. But if you're never brave enough to take in that vista, I have to believe you're going to wonder what might have been.