I’m a freshman at an incredibly liberal, change-the-world, dissolve-social-norms kind of school. It was my first choice and I was really excited when I got in. I was really excited when I got the financial aid. I was really excited all summer and I was really excited for the last three weeks, since I’ve been here. Today I found myself wishing I was “grown up”, married, two-kids-and-a-dog style, living in the suburbs. I’ve never wanted that in my life. What’s going on?
Your wish thinking shifted because the novelty of freshman week just wore off and you realized how boring the next four years are going to be stuck in the woods of either Oregon or Vermont staring at the same eight hundred pasty white and pierced faces.
You’re fantasizing about life in the real world. Well, not the actual real world, more like a mayonnaise and Volvo version of purgatory that includes mythical notions of job security and home ownership.
It’s probably a defense mechanism. Now that the shine is off the apple, you’re getting a taste of the cognitive dissonance that occurs by going into well over a hundred thousand dollars of personal debt for what is essentially glorified summer camp for bookish hippies.
I’m not saying that you should’ve taken the free ride at the state university, but hey, a hundred grand buys a lot of khakis.