i don’t miss college one bit (ok, maybe the flexibility of a schedule), and i frequently feel like a lot of people romanticize college as the best time in their lives when i don’t know if i’d say the same for myself. college was a very transformational time for me, and it was necessary, but it was often painful and frustrating. probably for me the best years were the last half of college through now.

sometimes people think it’s odd that i’m 27 and have a roommate who is not my significant other. maybe that’s juvenile, i don’t know, but it seems not so uncommon my generation, at least among single people who live in urban areas. i know that i enjoy coming home to a friendly face, to have someone to commiserate with over corporate bs with and to kill spiders for me, but who isn’t dependent on my constant attention. probably the bottom line is that it’s expensive to live alone in los angeles, and i think i prefer to have someone else around to keep me sane. i think being an adult out of college with a real job and still living with another young professional who is neither your sweetheart nor your very BEST friend really prepares you for ultimately living with a spouse or lover. it’s one skill to be able to function on your own and take care of yourself, but it’s another to coexist with someone else and share common spaces and household maintenance and keep it harmonious.

It’s been very challenging to face up to the fact that college was, in many ways, the best years of my life, and a lot of it had to do with the built in social structures. Because of my partner’s job limitations (academia), living near my family or near my friends from college wasn’t an option, and it was quite the wake-up call to realize that many, many social structures are built up in early adulthood and then maintained. There are obviously a lot of other options for those of us who can’t partake in that setup, but there’s a distinct shift in moving from the one to the other, especially for folks who have only ever known the continuity of one community. (Many of my friends whose families are all within a close geographic radius fall into this camp, though it’s becoming less and less common.)

Hugo, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the issue of folks, especially women, who follow their partners’ jobs to new locations. I was talking with a smart friend about this recently, and we realized that though this is still common, it’s often not overtly acknowledged, as though there’s something vaguely shameful about it.

Reading about privilege makes me sad. I had one semester at a private liberal arts college (before I realized I couldn’t afford it) and had to leave and spend one semester at a back-in-the-boonies CC before transferring to the state university. I’m getting a good education here, but I gets to me sometimes wondering what I could have had there. I’ve had friends at private schools that talked about the “intellectual cocoon” you mentioned. I think that would have been really nice.

Maybe that’s why I’m taking the risk of going to grad school. It is guaranteed to force me away from the Faulkner-esk quagmire of pain that is my extended family and it will (theoretically) be a time for developing me as a scholar and teacher. Maybe I’ll have that intellectual cocoon one day if I can get a placement in a good department.

I’m not ever leaving college.

To be honest, I always felt abit like a fish out of water at university – I had alot of not-so-great friendships and the community felt too closed for me.

I felt really free out there in the world – with people older than me who were doing exciting things with their lifes – and so many late night political debates about trade unionism, feminism, socialism, post-moderism (pro vs. anti) etc.

And, funnily enough, I’m now 39 and in a 10 year relationship with a much older man – we have a 3 year old child and he has a 27 year old son in medical school from a previous relationship. Maybe the fact that I’ve never felt properly a part of my peer group explains it or maybe that my parents had me fairly late in their lives (in their 40′s) so I relate well to people with parents who are near or in the same generation as mine – who knows??

Then…my friends graduated. And they fell into a state of (excuse my saying this)… a spoiled existence. For many of them, coming from the top of the their world to working low paying jobs or starting at the bottom was just “too much” for them. And, perhaps since I came from a different background…sometimes, I have to stand back and say, “Seriously, STFU and grow up.” Then I realized that, like you said, they never had the shock of the “real world.”

But, I have to be honest…sometimes I do grow tired of hearing about these poor, post-college adolescents who are “lost in the world.” Because, I find it very difficult to see how they are “lost”. And…in my opinion, coming out of an ivory tower, many students DON’T give average youth like me a chance. I cannot tell you the countless times I have had college students talk down to me because I wasn’t a part of “their world,” i.e., “What could you possibly know about post-structuralism? You dropped out of high school!” I don’t hear enough about people like me or people I know who never had a real chance to join the world. The kids who are sort of tossed to the side.

And, after seeing my friends fall into depression upon entering the “real world” it seems there should be more emphasis on balancing academia and an outside life.

I hope this didn’t come off as bitter or anything…but…I mean…I have witnessed this stuff first hand as an outsider. And, as someone who is now working full-time, attempting to study BIOLOGY, and taking care of an autistic brother, to hear a bunch of college graduates lament about the world is enough to drive me up the wall.

Anyway, as I mentioned when I offered my personal solution to the “post-college blues,” I’m very much in favor of people forming supportive communities with the people of their choice. It’s a pity that many people haven’t inherited healthy support systems, and that the culture furthers this damage by spouting the idea that young people universally detest their parents and should do everything in their power to escape them (an idea maintained by both adolescents and adults). The only way to combat this is to begin the tremendous task of creating new communities. Whether it’s with your chosen family or your family by birth doesn’t matter.* What matters is whether it happens at all.

* Well okay, it matters some. As my grandmother gets older and weaker I get increasingly outraged about the way the elderly are first marginalized and then neglected (often to death) in our society.