Introspection
or Christmas Wishes for All
Sarah and I were on the campus of IUPUI this weekend when that feeling started bothering me again. Looking around at all of the people (and worse, the one-way streets) made my stomach flop around like a fish out of water. A big campus to look forward to in a year and a half is only a part of the story.
The real world is coming to get me. It got Brian. I'm next.
In high school, most seniors got serious only because they didn't want their grades to slip and screw up any chance they had to get into college. Now that we're all here, 9/10 people on campus are actually going to join the 3/10 or so in high school who went straight into the work force. Those people are probably comfortable now. Their couple years of gripping the real world by their fingertips has finally allowed them to get a firmer grip on life's truths. Now most seniors are getting serious because they know they are about to join the world that's been prepped by those who went into the working force right out of high school. They know that parental aid, financial aid, and work studies are all things of the past. This is the real world. This is 40 hours of honest-to-God work. This is paying off every one of those loans that seemed so far away only six months before graduation. This is the end of the great big dating pool - it's serious relationships or one night stands with a member of the opposite sex that you find at the bar from now on. This is the responsibility of finding a place to live that will probably cost more than a college dorm room but give even less freedom!
Marriage, more degrees, more schools, apartments, job, money money money moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney(*#$*(!@#
I'm reminded of a song that I was asked to sing at our 5th grade Sunday School Christmas party - "One Day at a Time" - although I don't know why. At this stage, one can't afford to live day to day on bread alone, so to speak. It takes almost as much planning as it does money to last six months out there. It takes vision, love, resilience, ironic jokes, and lots of superglue to keep everything together. So this Christmas, I hope that all of these things begin to find my college-aged readers.
[Hint: If you look to the left in most checkout lanes, you will find superglue. Just in case Santa forgets to grab that one for ya.]
or Christmas Wishes for All
Sarah and I were on the campus of IUPUI this weekend when that feeling started bothering me again. Looking around at all of the people (and worse, the one-way streets) made my stomach flop around like a fish out of water. A big campus to look forward to in a year and a half is only a part of the story.
The real world is coming to get me. It got Brian. I'm next.
In high school, most seniors got serious only because they didn't want their grades to slip and screw up any chance they had to get into college. Now that we're all here, 9/10 people on campus are actually going to join the 3/10 or so in high school who went straight into the work force. Those people are probably comfortable now. Their couple years of gripping the real world by their fingertips has finally allowed them to get a firmer grip on life's truths. Now most seniors are getting serious because they know they are about to join the world that's been prepped by those who went into the working force right out of high school. They know that parental aid, financial aid, and work studies are all things of the past. This is the real world. This is 40 hours of honest-to-God work. This is paying off every one of those loans that seemed so far away only six months before graduation. This is the end of the great big dating pool - it's serious relationships or one night stands with a member of the opposite sex that you find at the bar from now on. This is the responsibility of finding a place to live that will probably cost more than a college dorm room but give even less freedom!
Marriage, more degrees, more schools, apartments, job, money money money moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney(*#$*(!@#
I'm reminded of a song that I was asked to sing at our 5th grade Sunday School Christmas party - "One Day at a Time" - although I don't know why. At this stage, one can't afford to live day to day on bread alone, so to speak. It takes almost as much planning as it does money to last six months out there. It takes vision, love, resilience, ironic jokes, and lots of superglue to keep everything together. So this Christmas, I hope that all of these things begin to find my college-aged readers.
[Hint: If you look to the left in most checkout lanes, you will find superglue. Just in case Santa forgets to grab that one for ya.]
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