This is a terrible position to be in. “There is nothing new under the sun.” How true that is. It seems as if every new stage I enter in my life, I’m late in my arrival, and all my predecessors have worn it out thoroughly. I can’t tell you how many people, when I was a first-year student, told me to enjoy college because it goes so fast! And when I remarked at how quickly my first year went, the rebuttal was always the same: it only gets faster! So now I’m in a horrible spot: No matter what I do, no matter which path I choose, it all leads me to cliches, and finally realizing things that everyone before me already has. This summer, I became so sick of hearing friends say, “Wow, I can’t believe we’re seniors!” That I started responding with, “Why not? We signed up for four years of school, We passed all the classes for three.” I’d go so far as to break it down for them so that there could be no confusion, no disbelief over the validity of our senior status: “Once a student reaches their fourth year of schooling, they have risen above first-year, sophomore, and junior, and are placed into the senior category. Didn’t we pass through all those stages? Don’t you remember the full three years we spent–” and usually I was cut off at around that point either by an annoyed request for an abrupt end, or by an incriminating eye roll. Either way, I feel bad for all my advisors, career center people, bosses, adult friends, and even parents! Every conversation with them seems to be the same as I’m sure they’ve heard countless seniors construct in the past:
1. I can’t believe how fast…yadda yadda
2. I’m excited to graduate and be done with classes (insert an exhale to demonstrate exhaustion)
3. but I’m not ready to leave all my friends (add a smile to show genuine caring for beloveds)
4. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing (tone=confident, not overcome by this)
5. but it’ll work out, God has a plan (if I were God, I’d be asleep, bored from hearing countless generations of graduates recite the same heartless list. sidenote: luckily for everyone, i’m not God)

If I desire to avoid all these standard responses, then I am only filling the overused shoes (probably with laces untied, for effect), of the rebel, who holds a trite demeanor of indifference to what happens, knowing that something will work out, and caring little about when exactly it does.

So as far as I can see, and I’ve spent an embarrassingly large amount of time looking at it, the situation is a lose-lose, it’s simply a choice of which cliche I’d like to be.
Please don’t mistake me for being bitter, I’ve loved Messiah, it has been absolutely the best thing for me, and I’m sure I will love what comes next, but I hate that after a childhood where Sunday school told me I was unique and special, and Sesame Street confirmed that everyone was different, I realize that we are all a lot more similar than I thought. So maybe it’s not my reactions to the stages of my life that makes me unique, maybe that’s asking too much. Perhaps it’s not MY anything that makes me special, different, important. Maybe I can only ‘transcend’ (to use my English major knowledge) my ordinary circumstances, if the extraordinary is reached by Someone else. Then again I’m sure millions of people have come to that conclusion already.

Posted on November 10th, 2009 by cw1220
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Wikipedia defines it as: “the natural number following 21 and preceding 23,” but to someone who has just become, 22, it is so much more. My birthday was last week, on Wednesday, and without any of my permission or even involvement, I instantly changed from 21–cool, new to adulthood, finally semi-legitimate in the world, to 22–one year older than 21. I discussed this with many friends, some who had already made the numerical change, and some who were still putting it off til later this year, and no one had any idea of what was good about turning 22.
The first decade of my life, each birthday caused an explosion of excitement, because I was one year closer to becoming a “big kid.” Once I hit 10, I was no longer single-digits, and I was old enough to finally realize that although this was very exciting, it was one of the first times when a chapter of my life was closing, with or without my approval. At 13, I finally joined the rest of that always changing group of individuals, who are consistently characterized by the same frustrations and emotions as those which characterized the group’s members before them–teenagers. Once I hit 18, I was finally legal to do things I had long decided to avoid, but it was nice not to need parents’ signatures for things. Then, at 20, I was finally able to break out of the terrible teens, and join the older group that could forever look back on, and down on, that from which I had just emerged. 21, that was a great one. Again it allowed me to do things I had very little interest in, but I was now fully adult. In addition, my birthday was on the 21st of October, so this was my golden year. It was a great one, to be sure, but more a year in which I experienced the refining that gold requires, rather than simply enjoying the gold itself. But now, at 22, there are no more of those presents that only life could give me, I’m left to enjoy only the tangible–cards, clothes, itunes gift cards. What do I celebrate? Being one year closer to 30? 40? 1,000,000? I’m sure that when I’m 40, I’ll look back on this blog, way back in the archives of Messiah’s website, on the computer built into the glasses I wear while driving my flying car coming back from vacationing on the moon, and laugh at my ignorance. But now, just turning 22, not even old enough to rent a car for the road (much less a flying car), what is there to be excited about?
As I searched every source for answers I had available: google, wikipedia, and the mysterious new kid in school, “bing,” I found out that in some forms of “numerology,” which is a practice where people give numbers special meanings, some believe that people who are 22s, find themselves feeling as if they live in two worlds, one which is overwhelmed by the mundane, and the other by the fantastic. Don’t get me wrong, I believe all that to be mere superstition and have no involvement in it, but it is interesting to think that 22, an age that is one of transition in our culture, creates this sense of the interplay of the mundane and the fantastic. I find that I think about these things as I plan for my future, though my planning and predictions may not involve strange numbers-turned-fortune-tellers. Will my life after school be one that includes a mundane, dull job and life? Or is the excitement just starting for me? Will I look back on college and conclude, “Those were the best four years of my life,” and depress everyone around me who wonders what I’ve been doing with my life since then, or will I look back on this stage with joy, but point out that each age of my life has been better than the last? Is the answer to this question one I have to wait until the end of my life to find out, or is it one for which I myself decide the answer?

Posted on October 28th, 2009 by cw1220
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Shout out to Alex DeHart, who helped me create this blog!

Posted on October 27th, 2009 by cw1220
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