School days, school days...

I spent the weekend with my sister, Laura, who is a sophomore at Grove City College in western Pennsylvania. It was good to see her and get to know her world some. It is really a different place - I said over and over again how it felt like we were in a different world altogether. It is very rural, simple, quiet, and seems far removed from the busy-ness of typical, American life. She is really happy, though, has delightful friends and seems to enjoy herself there.

Visiting Laura got me thinking about college...it's a pretty strange thing, you know? We move away from home (usually) to live more-or-less independently from our families. We go with the knowledge that we are one step closer to real, adult-like life, and with the goal of learning some skill or knowledge set that will (ostensibly) prepare us to function productively in said adult life.

While there and since I've been back, I have reflected a lot about what it was like for me to be a college student...and how different my life is now. I remember what it was like to be, more or less, independent. I remember the shift to making decisions mostly about me: deciding how to use my time or not use it...how to work, or whether to work, play, or do some of both...which relationships to pursue and invest in and which were less meaningful and temporary.

All said and done, it was such a strangely contrast-ful (?) sort of existence for me to be there...in one sense I lived like a college student: slept in, stayed out late, ate college food, hung out with Laura and her friends...and yet I was very keenly aware of the life I lead in Mississippi and the things drawing my heart back there. For one, Annie was really sick while I was gone, and for most of the time I was gone, we thought she would have to be hospitalized before I returned. It was scary, and I wanted to be able to hold her and be on the front lines of caring for her and deciding what to do next with her. For another, My voicemail at work (which is usually devoid of messages) was flooded with calls of people needing me to call them back. (Call them from a place with really stone age cell phone reception, at that.) On another level, emotionally, being away from home was tough in a way it usually isn't, because being away from home these days triggers thoughts and feelings (and dread) of what it will be like when we move next summer, and how hard that will be...I miss my dearest friends at home so much more desperately when I have been travelling these days than I typically do when I'm away. In that sense, weekend trip felt like a huge and severe separation. Several other story lines involving important people in my life and things going on in their lives occupied my thoughts. I was in Pennsylvania, but my heart was anchored in many different places. College wasn't like that.

My life now is so different, even though it feels like not long ago that I was in college. My life is not primarily about me...it is about a husband and his career, children and their needs, my work and the people who need me there, being a friend, sister, and all the rest. And it seems to take real, deliberate thought to consider making decisions for me - decisions that take into serious account what I need, how I want to use my time, how to take care of and not lose me in the midst of the others. That is something I have had to work to learn how to do...it doesn't come naturally to me, and it feels lots of the time like swimming upstream.

So I wonder...does college prepare us for life? Beyond being a place where we learn information pertinent to our respective careers, does it teach us how to live in the world, or is it a 4-year transition place between childhood and adulthood...a final hoorah of sorts before real life sets in?

I think I would do college much differently if I were to suddenly be transported back to 18. I perhaps would enjoy the hoorah of it more than I did, would have celebrated the opportunity to focus on me and me only instead of rushing to get out and on with life. I am glad (for a number of reasons)that I won't be transported back to that place...mostly because my life is infinitely richer now than it was then. The people who are part of my life (and need my involvement in their lives) make it a precious and vibrant place to know and be known. I wouldn't trade them and the headaches they sometimes create for me for anything.

I guess my point about the college years is this: like much about life, we appreciate it much more in retrospect than we do in the midst of it. Maybe that would be good for me to think about, now, too...