30th Oct 2006
The Art of Looking Back
No, this is not a post about memoir writing.
It is a post about making yourself feel better during the workday.
Please, follow these steps.
1. Locate a blog from your college (or even high school, for greater effect). I’ll lend you one from Wesleyan, if you don’t have one, or perhaps from Smith, but the Smith blogs look like a marketing effort on behalf of admissions. I’ve checked for New Mexico Highlands, where I did my teaching program, but alas I’m not sure people blog much in rural New Mexico.
2. When you have a spare moment during the workday, just check the posts and see if anything seems familiar.
For example, today’s post on Wesleying, titled, “Email Us Your Events, Jerkfaces,” was a somber reminder of the difficulties of scheduling. Plus, points are given for the use of “jerkfaces” in a sentence. That made me smile. That was honest.
Reading further, I found lots of pictures of Wesleyan students, which Anne has pointed out just look like another version of us fifteen years ago. Except they are much hipper. It might have been nice to go to school when grunge wasn’t popular.
As you scroll, note how the same exact campus problems exist in 2006 as in 1992: drug parties at Eclectic House. Shocking. No housing for juniors. I’m floored. A list of supposed rapists on the first floor of the women’s room in the campus center. Yup. Know it. This could have been written fifteen years ago.
3. Now, feeling the tickle of college anxiety and angst, continue to wander around on this blog for a while.
In the case of Wesleying, you will find links to an anonymous board of Wesleyan students posting their particular challenges, which seem to consist of lots and lots of crushes and one guy having sex with a young woman who was menstruating and being puzzled (nay, annoyed) by this fact.*
And with that, I had to stop reading, because looking back had served its purpose. The trick is appreciating how different life can be. Nothing was harder than college. Nothing. And I’m not even sure why. I had to show up for meals and classes and work and study. But it was literally the most difficult time of my life. And one of the best things about college is that at some point, it ended, I got a series of jobs, earned some money, met my spouse, bought a house, and did not have to post anonymous crushes on livejournal. Ahem. Not that livejournal existed back in the day. But if it had, I would definitely be the woman who menstruated who had someone post about it the next day.
*Note to Wesleyan Men who encounter Menstruating Women: It happens, kids, and trust me, you are not seeming worldly by complaining about having to wash the sheets. Vaginas had a biological purpose long before it was housing your penis during recreational sex. Must I recommend Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era
