16th Grade (three years later)

Just found this. I wrote it right before I gave up trying to get the BDH to publish my columns . . . three years later and kind of funny that it's still relevant . . .

If you are a senior, you might already be certain that you are ready to graduate and move on. But maybe you are more like me and sometimes you wonder whether or not you are really ready to leave the haven of college life in four short months. You know that you’ll miss living within a half-mile radius of all your friends; you’ll miss the four (or five, or six and a half) year period that is the only time in your life when the independence: responsibility ratio is tilted in your favor. But even though I know I will miss many things about college, I have also realized that it is time to leave. Embracing the identity of a senior means you recognize that you are at the end of a stage. Maybe being called a senior doesn’t have any effect on you. After all, we were seniors before, and, when we hit sixty-five, the only remaining birthday to look forward to after turning twenty-one, we will be seniors again and once again will be able to take advantage of discounted tickets. But think about it this way—as seniors in college, we are actually in the 16^th grade. We are 16^th graders. That sounds ridiculous. It is clearly time to move on. Not only that, but think about this: when it actually becomes “next year” people will have to stop asking you what you are going to do next year.

Back when we called them grades, instead of years or semesters, everyone always asked us, “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” Now that we are second-semester seniors instead of third-graders, that has turned into “What are you going to do next year?” I don’t remember if I even liked being asked about my future plans when I was little. I’ve never had a dream job—I never went through the “I want to be a firefighter/doctor/astronaut” stage and I missed the wave in 5^th grade when suddenly everyone wanted to become a marine biologist. But the consequences of being undecided on a career were not as great then. When asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you randomly picked a profession, drew a nice picture of a dentist in your journal and everyone was happy, even though you depicted your future-dentist-self with arms coming out of your head. It shouldn’t be any different today. What we want to be when we grow up will always be a dream for the future, and the future is not now. It never is. There will always be a next year, which means that technically people could keep asking you what you are “going to do next year” for the rest of your life. But they won’t because it won’t be an issue after college; you will no longer be part of the artificially-constructed stage of life that is our society’s extended adolescence and so periods of your life will no longer have imposed definite endings.

So there is no reason that not having a clear idea about what you are doing with your future should prevent you from feeling ready to leave Brown. Like any relationship, you should break up when it feels over, even if you don’t have a new prospect lined up. There is no need to be what one might call a “serial dater,” and there is no need to feel unprepared just because you might have a little bit (or several years) of down time between Brown and your next prestigious engagement. When I tell people I want to travel next year, they say, “Oh, so you’re taking time off?” Time off from what? The expected further education or career progression of an Ivy League graduate? I know I am ready to graduate because I am ready to stop thinking about life in terms of “time off,” which presupposes that there is something else you should be doing.

Regardless of what you end up doing right away after college, it is still going to be a little difficult at first to transition from Brown. When asked to write my name on a list next year, I’ll probably draw an underscore between my first and last names out of habit. Tired of walking home on some night, I’ll probably attempt to climb into an unsuspecting white minivan stopped in traffic. And there are definitely things I haven’t done yet, or formally prepared myself for. Living in a dorm all four years that I’ve been away from home, I’ve never had to buy my own toilet paper. But, you know what, I think I’ll be able to handle it.

Cecilia Kiely ’04 wants to be an adult when she grows up.