Finally home, you flop down on the Ikea furniture wondering if you actually have the stamina to boil water for the Ramen. Instead, you call for Chinese takeout, but then you realize you can only afford a fortune cookie, but at least you don't have to make it yourself. Then by some stroke of luck it's must see TV time. So you flip on "Beverly Hills, 90210."
Yes, it's still on. It's the mid-life crisis years and Donna's implants have leaked. Dylan has killed himself three times and he still somehow gets resurrected for the Christmas episode as the ghost of Bob Marley. Brenda and Kelly realize that they really love each other, and everyone's cool with it except Steve Sanders. They all have trust funds and time to hang out and do whatever they want while winning Pulitzer Prizes and staging retrospective fashion shows. Soon, Party of Ten, and the Golden Years: Return of Fred Savage have finished and it is now 11 p.m., and you have an excuse to go to bed. On the nightstand lays a copy of the new self-help book by John Grisham entitled "Men are High Paid Defense Lawyers and Women are Underpaid Prosecutors: How to Reconcile your Differences in a Court of Law." Too tired to read the 20-page pop-up book, you pick up the Dilbert comic strip. The problem is you begin to weep uncontrollably, because like all things funny, it's all true. Sleep, Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Doesn't sound like too much fun, does it? While we are pulling all nighters strung out on Espresso Royale, plotting to kill the CRISP lady and trying to decide how we are going to make the world safe for democracy, this is the world that might await us outside. Sure maybe you were pre-med or pre-law and your cubicle comes with leather seats, Italian marble or those cool green scrubs, but it's all the same. Maybe you have kids, divorces, a couple of ferrets and think as David Byrne sings "How did I get here?" Maybe you become famous and you make phat bank and can finally pay all your Ann Arbor parking tickets, but then all you do is develop a drinking problem or do heroin with Mick on the Stones' Steel Wheelchairs tour while getting jet lagged on the flight to Paris in your personal jet.
College is the time to save ourselves from this mindlessness. I know, you think I'm a cold hearted cynic, or you're a business major who knows this is all true, but the signing bonus is too hard to pass up.
Actually, I still think that with hard work and a little luck I could still be President of the United States. I still think that I can save the world from population disaster or Bill Gates or whomever is plotting against us.
Despite being Catholic, I still attend church on Sunday and think the pope is just misunderstood, but what I'm saying is that we need to be careful in the choices we make. If I ever get to be president, I don't want to bomb Iraq to make the population problem disappear. I want them to find the cure for AIDS and cancer just like everyone else. (Unless of course I invented AZT or chemotherapy.) We need to start thinking about how we will achieve these things, instead of letting life guide us like it could in the example above. Let us not bow to our parents expectations of law school, med school or engineering. Let's do it because that is our choice. Let's not take our liberal arts degrees and sell out to Arthur Anderson, because that's the best pay we can get without a professional degree. If you're an artist, do it for the purity of art, not because it will award you fame or a Madison Avenue contract. Do it because you have confidence that your ideas really can change the world. Follow the real reasons you came here as an idealistic freshperson, not reasons of money, greed and avoidance of therapy. Don't look back in 20 years and realize you got from point A to point B because everyone else was doing it. Stop the madness by slowing down and let everyone else catch up to you.
I bet you a slice of Backroom that if we stop believing the propaganda that we are the lazy X/I/me generation, or that we no longer have barriers to conquer like our forefathers, we will go farther, faster, stronger and higher, and we will be happy when it's all over.
- If you think Michael Nagrant
is crazy, not because your friends do,
e-mail him at mjnagran@umich.edu.
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Michael Nagrant Life Serial |
02-04-99
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