Don't want to be Atrophy Wife

Have you ever felt that if you didn’t have some new thoughts to digest you were going to explode with the urgency?

I feel as though my brain has atrophied this past year. I am sure this is not (entirely) true. But certain skills that I had so finely honed throughout high school are beginning to slip. Writing, as I mentioned before, is one of them. Simple mathematics is another, as well as basic chemistry, biology, and physics skills, although these skills have yet to be tested in college, so I can’t say for sure. What else has suffered? Thinking critically? Filling in multiple choice bubbles? Granted, some of the things they trained us for in high school were useless, like how to use a scantron. Those do not exist outside of high school, thank god. I’m also sure I learned things that I can’t realize now, or ever begin to quantify or qualify.

But too often my brain is zoning out because it can’t think of something to ponder. I am very reflective by nature, but I have noticed myself losing the ability to keep myself entertained and occupied, and relying on other people and things, be they television, computer, or whatever, to keep me occupied. Is this just a natural part of growing up? Is this just my imagination flickering goodbye like Peter Pan’s tinkerbell after she drinks the poison? I will clap loud and proud – I believe in imagination!!!

This may not be something I should be worried about. I may simply be realizing that I am an “adult” now, done with my first year of college and considered by US law and society to be an adult, albeit totally financially dependent on my parents. I only have three years left before I leave school forever (unless I get a Masters or become a teacher, or both - I will not be getting a Ph.D., probably) and start having to worry about grown-up problems and figure out how I’m going to support myself. It won’t be easy. How am I going to learn how to do all that?! Eh, I have three whole years to work it out...

Or maybe I should be worried. My work in college came easy to me, for the most part. There were a couple times I was challenged, mostly by philosophy papers, but everything came disturbingly easy. Calculus was an exception, which had the worst of both worlds: I’d taken it the year before so I learned nothing new, but I was still terrible at it.

Now part of the problem was that I didn’t take many AP classes in high school, so I couldn’t get out of many core requirements. And another part was I didn’t understand first semester that just because a class fills up does not mean there’s no room for you. I also assumed for some reason that it would be bad for me to take more than 4 classes, even though one was only two credit hours per week. (St. Mary’s College of Maryland is weird by MD State colleges – our usual is 4 credit hours per class instead of 3) I think I was partially reacting to being overworked in high school (and underpaid) and as a result not doing very much in way of extracurricular activities or sports. I went from academics being my sole reason in high school to it being an afterthought of sorts my first year of college.

But I recognize the good that came of this – I joined many interesting clubs, namely Philosophy, Meditation, St Mary’s River Project, and Capoeira. I saw plays, movies, lectures, concerts galore. I played, talked, laughed, ran, sang, skipped, danced so much with many good friends. It was GREAT. Really, truly, fantastically awesome. :) And I don’t mean to bash that at all, because I’m very thankful for the ease with which I made good friends and the opportunities I had to be happy with them. All I did, in college, it seems, was play. Which doesn't seem like such a bad thing...

But all play and no work makes Jane a dull girl. At times I was restless, bored, ashamed, and/or lonely without enough work to occupy myself. I love being challenged to new levels. I definitely was challenged physically in Capoeira, and socially, having to live so closely with three stranger girls (who soon became two friends and one close acquaintance). But I was used to academic challenges being thrust upon myself by a rigorous high school curriculum with great teachers challenging me in humanities magnet classes and everything else AP or honors courses, and I expected college to do the same. And for a while I was bitter that I was “settling” for a state school, which is a narrow-minded prejudice of mine which I’ve worked really hard to overcome. And I think I’ve finally succeeded. St. Mary’s is a fabulous college and I am proud to be a Seahawk. But at the time of first semester, I was a little bitter. Is this it? I thought. This is too easy. I loved learning sign language, but level 1 was easy. I loved writing fiction in my Victorian Monsters seminar, but again it was no challenge. I did not enjoy my ridiculously easy poli-sci class because I can honestly say I learned nothing new in that class. And there was Calculus, and I loathe that even when I have a good teacher, which sadly, I did not. I can’t say why I didn’t just sign up for more classes – I was under credit, so I could have done it easily. My time was instead spent hanging with friends, going out to school-sponsored activities and attending a variety of clubs, which I did enjoy tremendously.

Even at the time, the very idea that I was getting dumber scared me shitless. The slow realization that I don’t have to work at anything was terrifying and saddening. I certainly loved my classes, especially second semester, which had a good bit more work for me to do. My friends were way more stressed than me, but when they talked to me, they sounded so intelligent, so learned and experienced. I wondered how I sounded to them. Among some of my friends in college, I was cute, funny, and child-like, but I wondered how well I was respected. I loathed the idea of being “left behind”, not getting as much out of college as my peers. I want so badly to know how things work and the history of people and ideas and to understand the world around me.

Now that I’ve had time to reflect, I have made peace with my decisions and I think many of my fears were overreactions. But I am still upset by the idea that I need other people in order to be challenged, that I can’t go out there myself and find things to test myself when classes disappoint.

Conclusion: I need to be challenged by other people. If this does not happen, I have a hard time doing it myself. I want to learn how to better challenge myself, when stuck in a stultifying situation.

I can't imagine anyone caring enough to read all that. If you did, I don't deserve you as a reader. That's the cumulation of many thoughts I've been mulling over this past year. It kind of exploded out of me (without any editing - yay!) I'll try to make my next post a little more focused and less self-centered.

:: El Fin ::

//Edit//

I think this deserves its own entry at some point, but there is something I forgot to mention in this post which is very important to me. While being challenged is important, I want my work to help make the world good. This is part of the problem I have with going to college in the middle of nowhere, where without a car it can be hard to reach out to people outside my campus. That doesn't mean I'm not proud of the work I did teaching children about the Chesapeake Bay watershed through the St. Mary’s River project. But I know I can do more. I don’t have much money to give, but I have time and energy and enthusiasm, and I want to bring happiness and safety to those who need it most. There is so much suffering in the world. I refuse to sit idly without doing something to help.