This evening, I’m watching the movie “Accepted” in between working two jobs. The movie is the story of a boy who is not accepted into college and, not wanting to upset his parents, purchases an old building and starts his own school. He does it just to appease his guardians, and has his friends create a website to help make the school look authentic. What he doesn’t plan on happening, is for thousands of students to apply to the school. They are all automatically accepted and show up for class, not knowing that it isn’t a real school. This then leaves him to search out what the “college thing” is all about.
This made me reflect on my college experience. It was a bit atypical. I went to one school for a year, joined a sorority, and realized that I hated where I was. I transfered and ended up moving out of my house and becoming financially emancipated. There were some complications in my transfer, so I ended up taking a semester online. I completed my degree in apparel merchandising, business, English, and French in 3.5 years, including a study abroad program through a Big Ten university. Once I graduated, I moved to Manhattan for 4 months to work in fashion and realized that there was nothing about that field that I liked.
This led me straight back home, where I’ve been searching for a full-time job for the past 4.5 months. I wrote a book and have been working on a couple of picture books. I have more student debt than I’d like to admit to and I’m getting ready to buy my first car. Since I can’t find a job with my current degree, it looks like I need to defer my loans and go back to school.
Is this what the real world is all about? Collecting debt and working jobs that don’t allow for growth into my full potential?
What happened to the days our parents knew? They went to college in the 1970s (ok, jealous already) and took road trips all over the place doing crazy and illegal stuff. They graduated and were, for the most part, able to find jobs or to afford to take time off traveling around doing more illegal stuff. We read books and watch movies about the past and the main characters are all able to do as they please. They run into troubles, but come to good ends at the story’s conclusion. I suppose that’s why movies and books are considered “entertainment.” They allow readers and watchers to escape from their own lives and view the world through others’ lives.
It just makes me wonder what everything is all about, when it comes down to it. Where do we draw the line between living and surviving? We all know how we’d like to live, but most of us can’t survive while living the lives we want. Most of us are sacrificing life just to survive. We trudge through day after day, some of us know what we’d rather be doing, others don’t have the time or desire to think about what the way they want to live.
What do you think?
