Searching for the Bitter Pill

Typing this blog half naked and lying on my bed next to my history textbook with frequent breaks to stare at away messages like "I'm in Florida for a week," I begin to realize that I have become the bitter English professor who gave me my first C in college.

It was the last Wednesday before Thanksgiving break freshman year. At this time, I thought that most people would not shell out 200 dollars to go home for a measly three to four days. Even worse, I thought that most people would go to class the day before break because heck, if they weren't, why would the professor hold class anyway. So I went. 2:00 came and went. 2:05. My English professor, Dr. Vilmar, said "I guess we'll just get started." What followed was an intriguing conversation between a 30-year old Weird Al Yankovic lookalike and an 18-year old boy wondering what he has gotten himself into. The conversation ranged from Marcus Aurelias to Jay Leno, from Christianity to Animism, and from the Buckeyes to the Mets, all over some chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies. We eventually ended the conversation at 3:30 (inadvertently going over time by 40 minutes).

But one thing will stick with me forever. He asked me what I was doing for Thanksgiving break. I told him that I was going to stay at Emory, and shocked, he clenched his eyebrows and motioned his fingers for an explanation. Finding myself breaking the smug, uninterested looks of most professors in Dr. Vilmar, I said in a nervous flutter, "Yeah, you know. I just wanted to get some work done, and with everyone away, I guess it's a good time to study for my finals now." Impressed, he said, "That a boy!!! Take some more cookies." I didn't know why he was more happy for me than sorry for me, but 45 minutes later between a conversation of his engagement and my single life, I found out why. He reminisced on his college days and went off in a semi-lecture: "Back when I was in college, I had 8 close friends my freshman year. They kept telling me to hang out friday and saturday nights and even go to Cancun with them during Spring Break. But you know what I did? I stayed in and did work. And you know where I am now? I'm a professor. And you know where they are? Me neither. All I know is that they never got into grad school. Ha!"

Wow. I felt like I was listening to an overgrown Stewie Griffin who was clinging on to his fleeting dream of trying to conquer the world, but all he had to show for it was a bad haircut and a few pieces of paper on his wall. I walked away from that conversation, ultimately weirded out, feeling like I just found the evil twin brother of Will Farrell's character in Wedding Crashers.

Fast forward two years and this story probably explains why I didn't care that much about my gpa or even what I'll major in (eventually American Studies!). But after a semester of bad grades, broken relationships, and being a little fatty, everything caught up to me and I had the wake up call. You know the wake up call that happens to us sometime in our junior year for some and senior year for others, when we realize, "Holy crap! There's life after college where I have to make money and survive." When that came, out came new words as well: networking, cover letters, connect with you, touch base, etc.

So now I sit, I mean lie in my bed at home, wondering what he is doing and what she is doing in Florida and in Georgia and in China and in California and in Mexico and etc. But the first thoughts that are in my head are: Well, I'm figuring out mjy life. When I land an internship and I make 6 figures in a few years, it will all be worth it. Stupid partiers. I'll see you in a trash bag a few years down the road, begging me for a job. What in the hell just happened to me? I have become everything I've tried running away from during and after Stuyvesant High School.

But spring break is already here and there's nothing I can do about it except do the homework planned before me and the interviews that will hopefully be planned for me in the next 24 hours. But when I return to the collegiate life, mark my words. Let's bust out the cans of cheap alcohol to the ballads of Poison, let's make fun of the fags on MTVU and yell out fag out the window when no one else is listening in our overly politically correct campus, order late night delivery even though we're not even hungry and have cars to pick it up, and go to ridiculously bad parties with awkward group moments while Switchfoot plays in the background. Screw you, Dr. Vilmar, and bring it on, Van Wilder. Let me into your bosom of sweet collegiate life that never ends, where the bitter pill gets stuck where it belongs: in the drinks of Pre-Med students.