Growing up is hard to do

I’m not going to lie ‘- the first week of classes was rough. Like sandpaper, or your boyfriend’s ironic facial hair. Even before the first syllabus landed on my desk, I could feel the neurons in my brain spontaneously combusting. I was as nervous as a freshman again.

Before you start to think that I’m some sort of stressed-out whack job, I have to explain a few things about myself. First of all, I studied abroad last spring, which means I haven’t been so academically over-stimulated in nearly 10 months. I spent most of January through April lying on the beach and trying to develop a really cool accent so men would find me more interesting. In my free time, I went to what somehow qualified as a class. Life was good.

Then, of course, came summer. And what a summer it was. I had the world’s best job and the world’s best coworkers. I slept until noon, got paid to go to Boston Red Sox games and hang out at Faneuil Hall, threw awesome dance parties on the Warren Towers patio and fell in a lake (OK, that last part wasn’t so great, but plenty of other people had a good laugh over it).

But eventually that magical time ended and reality started looming heavily overhead. My senior year officially began, and I officially started freaking out.

Adulthood was suddenly following me around like a Greenpeace solicitor, reminding me that I need to figure out what I’m doing with my life and asking for my credit card number. I had to pretend like I was in the middle of a very important phone conversation just to get it to leave me alone. Yet for all my strategic avoidance of the matter at hand, I still found myself lying awake at night obsessing over my impending transition into the real world.

It was time for action. I needed a plan, a purpose and a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which are like Scooby Snacks to me. After my last class of the week, I started what had turned into a sort of quest for enlightenment. Naturally, my first thought was to sit under a tree and concentrate on reaching Nirvana, but I just didn’t have the patience for that. I tried to get some helpful advice from a Magic 8-ball, but it kept giving me conveniently ambiguous answers or telling me to ask again later, as if in an hour or so it wouldn’t still be a novelty toy that I fished out of the bargain bin at Goodwill.

It was eventually obvious that I needed to take a more aggressive approach to my problem, so I started barging in on professors without even bothering to check their posted office hours. They might not have been so startled had any of them actually met me before, nor if I hadn’t tried to forcefully remove the students they were already counseling. I’d have gone to the professors I know, but then I’d have to admit to them that I’m an aimless loser. I have an image to uphold, you know.

Nearing the point of complete desperation, I tried the Office of Career Services, but they were closed. Someone had stuck one of those ‘Will Return’ signs to the front door, the kind with a clock you can change to suit your intentions. Oddly enough, all the numbers had been crossed out and the hands instead pointed to a post-it note that said, ‘When the economy improves.’

Then, something rather wonderful happened. I received a call from one of the smartest people I know, an all-around good guy who has excellent taste in music and a better-than-average understanding of situational irony. He transferred out of Boston University this semester, and it had come time for him to leave.

It was as we were saying goodbye that I had a much-needed epiphany. As I watched him walk away from the life he’d made here, I couldn’t help but admire his bravery. He’s starting all over again ‘- new place, new people, new everything ‘- and he doesn’t seem at all worried that it might be difficult to adapt. That’s when I realized that leaving BU and entering the real world (or a different university, in my friend’s case) isn’t all that different from leaving home and coming to BU in the first place. I was scared then like I’m scared now, but didn’t everything turn out all right back when I was a freshman?

Some people say life is a journey, but it seems to me it’s more like a series of journeys that flow into one another as time goes on. We can try to resist the end of one journey or the start of another ‘- or we can be like my friend and, armed with courage and self-confidence, meet the challenge head-on.