Second thoughts

Adèle Barclay
Adèle Barclay

Nostalgia is eroding away my cynical edge. Suddenly, Stauffer’s fluorescent lights, the JDUC’s funky smell and Mac-Corry’s catacomb-like cement stairs are bordering on endearing—clearly some sort of strange fourth-year sentimentality is kicking in. On bad days I still curse the damp, bone-chilling Kingston wind, dodge getting splashed by cars on Brock Street as I grumble about some ridiculously small failed expectation and worry that my finely-honed jay-walking skills could lead to disaster should I move to a bigger city.

However, looking back at what has been an anxiety-plagued, yet fruitfully fun, year with an uncomfortably sincere sigh is, perhaps, a little easier than Thinking About Deep Shit and Asking Big Questions About The Future. But one thing I’ve ascertained is that I have trouble envisioning my life without school. This both settles and unsettles me. I’ve been educationally institutionalized for so long, I twitch nervously when I don’t have a stack of books to read.

Clearly there is life after undergrad just as there is life without it. And due to these Difficult Economic Times many of my scientifically-inclined peers are discovering that despite the $60,000 investment over four years there may not be a stable place for them in the wide world—just as humanities students have it rubbed into their faces during frosh week. University isn’t necessarily the smartest route after all. But much as I’d like to entertain thinking outside the classroom, I find myself coming back to it. Since I’ve signed up for the next step and another one to two years, how to justify my decision to stay in school next year? Hanging out with words is allegedly one of my strengths and maybe I’m not adventurous or creative enough to think to do anything different. I know I’m extremely privileged to have this option, but unlike those students who, in a study by the University of California, Irvine, claimed they expected decent marks just for showing up, I’ve also worked for it.

These students’ sentiments are trickily in line with the obnoxiously classist Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente’s take on our generation as “trophy children” (read: coddled over-achievers who grow up believing they can do anything and are applauded for participation). I still maintain that any actual self-respecting and -deprecating over-achiever has a more heightened sense of self-awareness than Ms. Wente herself seems to possess.

The phrase “It’s a good time to stay in school” gets thrown around a lot. Somehow this sage advice just isn’t enough for me. I guess I’m torn between stabbing at practicality and harbouring big dreams. One sassy and brilliant professor offered me this simple reflection: undergrad is one of those times that, in retrospection, you have to work on self-improvement. Disregarding the squalor in which I live and how I’m frantically typing out this overtly self-indulgent editorial on a press day, I just hope this has been—and continues to be—the case.

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