Still as confused as ever

I just stumbled upon this gem: My first college essay, from English 105 with Jay Imbrenda. I'm not sure how much of it was meant to be connected to the literature...mostly I just wrote about my first month of college existential crisis. Reading it, I realized how incredibly confused, floundering, and miserable I was those first, um, two years of college. The floundering certainly continues, and although I've figured out a few of my quandaries in the 2.5 years since, new ones have arisen, and I'm likely only more confused at this point. Enjoy. Or don't. I was such a prissy little idealist. It's painful. And yet the sentiment of it is still mostly true.

I think this assignment was supposed to have something to do with Galilieo, Neil Postman, and Bill Gates all in one. Don't even ask me how, but clearly I didn't follow directions too well. I'm not even sure what I'm talking about:

Who Am I, and What the Hell Am I Doing Here?

The other day, I was leafing through a college guide leaflet someone’s mother had ripped from an airplane magazine. One of the suggestions was to “reinvent yourself.” “Create a new you!” it flirtatiously suggested, alongside a cutesy cartoon of a disproportionately thin, primped, cool college girl holding up a picture of her former, geeky, eyeglass-wearing high school self. This article tells me I can recreate my image, reputation, and classification without a second glance. No one here knows who I was for the first eighteen years of my life. College is the great release from my oppressive house and family-bound high school life. A world of opportunities has been opened to me. I have complete jurisdiction over myself for the first time. And I can do whatever I want. Or so I have been told.
All these notions and ideals concerning college have been shoved down my throat for the longest time. So what it is about college that I find so unnatural, so disquieting, so…odd? Why do I often stare up at my Portuguese flag as I lie on my back in bed and wonder, “What I am doing here?” Or-as I read thirty pages about globalization for a class: “Is there something I could be doing that would be more fulfilling?” The lights blare as my roommates watch a TV show on their laptops or use facebook, and I let my mind wander.
High school was easy to reckon with. It is just what everyone does after middle school, and it doesn’t matter if you aren’t motivated, aren’t excited, or don’t like school, because you have a whole other life-that which exists outside of school. During this time you can do whatever you damn well please. College doesn’t afford you two separate lives. The thing is, when I was in high school, I was motivated, I was often excited, and I did like school, usually. Yet come to think of it, I was unsettled with high school and its purposes too. That is why, Junior year, I had to run off to a boarding school on a farm in Vermont, and why, Senior year, I cut out early and headed to Portugal as an exchange student. It was never that I thought I was above high school and now it is not because I think I am too good for college. I know I need college, by which I mean the reasons why have been drilled into me. I’m just scared of what it is doing to me.
Back to that leaflet. I got angry. How can you change yourself fundamentally from the time you graduate high school to when you start college? It's, um, three months. Or is the idea that you are bringing out that person who always existed but was stifled by reputation and the conventions of a typical high school? And what if I don’t want to change?
I like who I was in high school. I was not known by everyone, but I was respected by those who knew me. I was comfortable. I had a small number of friends who were and still are very close to me. And if my friends had to say one thing about me, it would probably be “down-to-earth.” I could not ask for a better image, really. I had no need to be friendly because I was secure in whom I knew and whom I didn’t. And now everything has changed.
We are supposed to have more options in college, but I feel I have less. I can never be alone. I am constantly surrounded by people. I tried to eat a quick breakfast this morning before class and I was summoned over by two guys, admonished for “being a loser and eating alone.” I try to fall asleep early at night, but my roommates are studying or dancing, with the lights on, of course. Or they are glued to their computers, to their facebook, wasting time, something to which I will return later.
I am exhausted, but my exhaustion has nothing to do with sleep deprivation and everything to do with social overexertion. Sometime in the six months I spent dropped off the face of the American earth, something changed in me. Suddenly, without even batting an eye, I have become two things I never was before, and I am not sure how I feel about it. For one, I am an extrovert, at least outwardly I am, though I guess that is by definition what being an extrovert is: outward appearance. I didn’t just decide I was. Someone told me last week. For a large part I feel this is in direct conflict with my former, down-to-earth, self. Hand-in-hand with this, I have become (once again, by others’ approximation; not my own) “the girl who knows everyone.” I have been struggling with this, and unsure of how to proceed. Have I truly become this new person,? Am I becoming shallow and less of an individual in the process?
And now you must be wondering, when will I bring in Postman and Gates? And Galileo, where does he fit in with all of this? I am struggling to be all of them. I am Galileo. The things I do every day try to defy convention, at least in small ways. In high school I did it by leaving. Now I continue in other ways. I am already seeking new options, leaving campus for my courses. I am juggling in my spare time and unicycling through ultimate Frisbee games. I question my place in the world, and more specifically, in college, just as Galileo questioned his and everyone’s place. And by doing so, I am making others angry, just as Galileo did. I am leaving the party when I’ve had enough. I am going to bed when I am tired. And I am trying, oh so hard, to eat breakfast by myself. And yes, this makes people angry.
I am Postman. I deleted my facebook. I was disturbed at how wholly unnatural it seemed to delegate friendships to the simple functions of “poking”, “grouping” and “networking.” Not to mention the time it wastes. It keeps my roommates up at night so they can complain that they are tired the next day. It sucks us in for hours each day, a virtual connection with no basis in reality. People say things on facebook they wouldn’t dare say in person. It imitates intimacy. And the complacency Postman speaks of? That is why I created my facebook profile in the first place, and that is why my peers are glued to it.
I am Gates. I am hooked up, strapped in, reliant on technology. And I am enjoying it. I am watching movies on my personal computer. I am using blackboard every day. I check my email constantly. My computer always seems to be downloading, uploading, printing, saving, with me at the keys. I need it.
I admonish technology and depend on it. I am a friendly extrovert, but it is not in my nature, or at least it wasn’t until now. I know a lot of people, but I don’t let them know me. I let the two guys at breakfast drag me over to their table. I think I am special, different, unique, doing and saying things that don’t fit the norm, but am I really? I may get into bed when I want, but I don’t have the guts to tell my facebooking roommates to turn off the light, so I stare at my Portuguese flag. I have no sweeping generalization to make, no all-encompassing conclusion to turn this into a tidy essay. I certainly had trouble keeping it at two pages. But maybe tonight, I will ask my roommates to turn off the light. And maybe tomorrow, I will eat breakfast alone. I’m confused, but who isn’t? Who am I and what am I doing here?