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The 'Second-Term, first-Year crisis'
The process of choosing, enrolling and attending a university is much like falling in love. There's the initial attraction: the first time a hopeful high school student glimpses a brochure with impressive buildings and an idyllic academic setting mimics the first time the eyes of two lovers meet across a crowded room. The high school student gazes at the picture, imagining the infinite possibilities, yearning to experience what the university has to offer, to find something new and different. The lovers make their way across the room, drawn to the mystery and the potential of this new stranger. There is an inevitable attraction, to something about the look, and the idea of this shadowy and unknown future. The student appeals to this university, attempting to charm admissions officers with transcripts, essays and interviews. The lovers go to coffee, to dinner—selling each other an idea of themselves over candle-lit dinners and walks on the beach. And the student finally receives the admissions packet from their beloved university; the lovers finally have "the talk" defining their relationship as something exclusive and material. It's a moment of excitement—a swelling excitement of the idea that this infinite potential of the future could be real, and could be achieved. Suddenly, wild daydreams and idle hopes have a chance of being achieved in day-to-day life. And herein lies the problem of what I call the "second-term, first-year crisis" or the problem of potential. The process of getting in and attending a university creates an image of an idyllic future; it's an imaginative process, as the student pictures themselves and their life at the institution. It's a process of infatuation with the infinite potential of the experience. But more than halfway through the first year of studies, things are no longer new, strange or mysterious. The ideal is lost. Sylvia Plath wrote of potential in her novel, The Bell Jar, picturing herself at the foot of a plum tree. The tree bore fruit, but picking one fruit, meant neglecting the others—essentially illustrating her choices as being mutually exclusive. To have one, was to lose another. The fruit, for Plath, represented paths for her future, and she became paralyzed, knowing that she would have to choose one and lose the others. Whether you like it or not, as a university student, time will progress. And with that progression, you will be forced to make more and more choices at an increasing rate. And as choices increase, the amount of choices you are able to make decrease. The mystery of potential is gone, and you realize that you are yourself, and not that idealized version of who you thought you would be—whether you're in a new relationship or a new environment. It's a sense of disillusionment of the realization that life must be proactive, the infinite idea is exceedingly transitory, and you are yourself, no matter who you are and who you're with. And nothing can be perfect, except for the nothing itself. And though the absence of experience may be as tantalizing as Christmas Eve, the university experience forces you to choose a major, pick your friends, pick your interests and define your life—frightening as that may be. PREVIOUS ENTRIES Are We Defined By Our Things? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
