all my friends back home have packed up and moved out of college for the summer. they’re driving around town getting jobs. they’re going shopping and going to shows, they’re taking road trips to see each other. they’re sitting down and looking back at the semester, contemplating the changes in their lives. they’re making lists of the top ten cds of spring 2002, as if spring were over.
sadly, it’s not. and my summer doesn’t start until, for them, it starts coming to a close.
that’s another reason i wanted to stay at stanford over the summer–that long month and a half from the middle of august through september, when everyone else is back at school and i’m at home, working, or sitting around being lonely.
maybe i shouldn’t be lonely (after all, i’ve got family, and not everyone has left town), or maybe i shouldn’t want to run from it.
unfortunately, it’s looking more and more like i won’t have the opportunity to make that moral, character-building decision for myself. unless i find a job soon, my housing opportunity will be gone, and i’ll be going home to florida for the summer.
now don’t get me wrong–i love orlando. i love it to death. i love my friends and family. and it would be a great sacrifice to stay here at stanford, and miss out on all that. i also love the florida weather, the warm, breezy nights devoid of that irritating chill so prevalent in northern california. i love the beaches, the sunrise over the atlantic, the tropical feel…
all the same, i want an adventure. i want to live on my own. i want to burn my own frozen pizza in my own stove. i want to be able to invite a girl over to my place: my small, crappy, overpriced apartment. i don’t want to be babied by the university, or charged exorbitant fees for their definition of fine cuisine.
i also wanted to apply for and get a job on my own–because of my own credentials, and not because my parents worked at the place. i wanted to make it, with god’s grace. i don’t want to be lonely or alone–wherever i am in the next few months, i plan on hanging out with people daily and building relationships to the best of my poor ability. i just wanted to be truly self-sufficient (in terms of housing and food) for the first time in 19.5 years.
but maybe i’m not ready anyway.
