I went to a college that was overwhelmingly corporate. I do not wish to call it by name, so let’s refer to it as Preprofessional University, or PU for short. Prior to PU, I did not know what people meant when they said they wanted to do “IB.” I did not know that you could have a “consulting club” or that people would want to be in a “consulting club.” I had never heard the term “coffee chat.” Honestly, I had little idea of PU’s prestige before applying. My mom and I are just so geographically challenged that we’d figured it would be no problem to swing by on our way to another school at the other end of the state. It was in fact an eight hour train from one school to another, but nonetheless, I visited PU and was enamored by its collegiate buildings and walkways.

PU could also stand for Power trip University. It was epic! It was biblical! These kids were so used to being revered as excellent, so desperate for success, that they took any opportunity to signal their superiority and suppress other students. That “consulting club” I mentioned, my roommate went through SIX ROUNDS OF INTERVIEWS just to be rejected. If a kid a year above me had the audacity to invite me back for a second, let alone sixth, round interview for an extracurricular club… I’d have to laugh.

In my last therapy session, I shared that I had started this blog, but I was nervous because it was so predictable, and mine paled in comparison to some of my peers’ publications and achievements. My therapist was confused. I told her how most people I went to school with have either a blog or newsletter or personal website. She said she knew no one with anything of the sort. A much appreciated reality check that most people didn’t attend frat parties with Forbe’s 30-under-30 list.

I knew it was semi-miraculous that I’d ended up on PU’s campus in the summer of 2015. A high school peer of mine laughed when I told her I was attending PU for computer science. And no, this was not a catty individual, she genuinely thought I was joking. I did well in high school, but that is not what I was known for. Since elementary school, in fact, I’d been part of the “gifted” crowd whatever the hell that meant, but I was also a class clown, disorganized, and a mid-level achiever. I did well because I liked school. I loved my elementary schools. I loved middle and high school. Of course there were the trials of adolescence. But overall, I have been blessed with an incredible primary education, rich not just in resources but in joy and community.

In junior year of high school, my grades began to drop. By now, being a high achieving student was an integral part of the identity of the students sharing my course load. They did what it took to maintain this status, especially with the college process freshly underway. I, however, was more process than outcome oriented. I was used to putting in a certain amount of work, and to that point, the outcome was pretty good. As I started taking on more advanced classes, I put in the same amount of work, but the outcome changed. So, I really cannot blame my friend for being miffed when I announced to her I was going to PU’s engineering school.

As I arrived at PU, my edge was that I was not expecting to be the best. I’d been warned of the fallacy of students coming to such institutions, having been the brightest and most talented, expecting for that to remain true. Of course, only a small minority will actually be able to be that, at least by the predominant standards of grades and community recognition. I knew this would not be the case for me, so I was able to avoid the initial shock of being average. Well, my edge wasn’t particularly sharp, because I was still aggressively humbled and quickly realized STEM was not! for! me! Sorry, women. The one silver lining was that while I basically failed all my comp. sci. courses, I got a 100% on my final essay for a writing elective I’d taken. I was told in high school that you could not get a 100% on an essay because there is always room for improvement. Clearly, I’d miss assessed which subjects I’d been better prepared for.

I can take total accountability and admit I did not deserve to do well in those STEM courses. I did not take advantage of office hours or resources. I did not put enough time into assignments. Some classes I did not attend, and the ones I did, I was often dozing or internet browsing. Even if it was the wrong fit for me. Even if I did not have the same talents as some of my peers, I wasted my time, my professors’ time, and my peers’ time by not at least trying my best. I know of many other students who worked their asses off to keep up, learn, improve, and graduate with that damn engineering degree and I applaud them. That said, a lot of PU’s comp. sci. department, especially for the first year, was WACK. WACK I TELL YOU.

I have a chronic illness which may get a blog post at another time, but during freshman orientation I met with the department of disabilities at PU just to cross my Ts and dot my Is. I didn’t ask for any sort of accommodations. I just wanted to put it on their radar that I do not make blood and would have to go get some every month, and so I would need to keep a schedule that allowed for that. They did not really offer any advice in that regard (and I never engaged with this department for the rest of my PU career). They DID, however, mention that I should be careful in one of my classes because lots of students get caught cheating*. I wanted to say, “if that is notoriously the case, then maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a good intro class.”

Another infamous intro class featured a professor who had a godlike reputation. He had a yearly talk that was revered as life changing. His class also had an average of about a 40%. With the goal to either inspire or shame us, I’m not sure which, he would tell us about students he had in India who were so horrible at the subject and then, after devoting all their days and nights to studying, became experts. Personally, I was not inspired nor shamed. I actually was completely content with the fact that I did not want to nor should have to devote more hours than a full time job to a single class just to get maybe a B. And while I did not feel the need to get a B, I did want to pass the class. When I met with the professor to express my concern of the likelihood of such, he proposed I drop the class, continue attending the lectures, taking the exams etc. and then take it again the following semester. I accepted my D+ (yes this was a passing grade) at the end of that semester and carried on.

At this point it was becoming difficult to parse out what was my “defying The Man” and what was me just not doing well. It wasn’t like I was rejecting twelve hour study sessions in the pursuit of good rest, personal fulfillment, and self compassion. I was still sleeping like shit, eating like shit, feeling like shit, and with nothing to show for it. So as much as I wanted to paint my freshman year failings as a radical denouncement of the “norm,” that’s not entirely the case.

Academically, I did more or less figure things out. In as round about a way as possible, I made my way to the communications school at PU. There, I was able to regain some of my academic confidence. In addition to feeling more at home in the discussion and writing based classes I was taking, I also challenged myself with courses out of my comfort zone. I took an architecture art history course alongside many architecture students and a seminar on freedom of speech. These two classes pushed me to engage with material in a way I’d never had to before. These were not classes I could “finesse” my way through as I am often so good at doing. I am embarrassed writing this now, because I am sharing that one of my greatest accomplishments in college, was putting in the same amount of effort into a course that most of my peers had been for their entire academic careers.

Dude, I am so off course from what I meant to write about. We’re gonna have to speed this up… blah blah I was fine being mid but still felt bad about myself blah blah I was very depressed blah blah blah I was in an isolated world of self destruction but at least my grades got better blah blah ok we’re at senior year. While I saw through its malarkey, I did sip some of the PU kool aid. PU had an ample offering of ~ senior societies ~ which I viewed as a way to get one last good power trip in before graduation. First, you had to get “tapped” by an existing member, next shmooze at these weird networking gatherings, submit an application, and then your peers who you know pretty well get in a room to talk about how “actually she is really annoying in rehearsal and I don’t think we need that energy” or “oh but we could use a queer, triple-major juggler to round out the group” idfk. I was tapped by three people which means I’m super cool and elite. No, it means I had at least three friends who happened to be in three different societies. Oh god this is going to get tricky with all my pseudonyms.

Okay here are the three:

The Performers: A group of, yeah, performers. Dancers, actors, singers etc. A relatively new group compared to the other two which have been around since like 1900.

Pretentious 1: Joe Biden was a part of this one?

Pretentious 2: No one I knew was in the first google search result, so that’s why it is number two.

You could only apply to Pretentious 1 OR Pretentious 2. I went for Pretentious 1 even though I liked the people in Pretentious 2 better (because of the kool aid!!!). Silly me. I did not get in.

I did get into The Performers which both excited and terrified me as I had become such a shell of myself I was afraid to meet new people 😀 One of the things The Performers did was put on a showcase at the end of the year. You could sign up for different things and we were encouraged to collaborate. I am a dancer. Another member had posted about wanting to do a spoken word / interpretive dance collaboration. I love spoken word. I put my name down. When we met to discuss the performance, I was the only person who’d shown interest. She then proceeded to ask which of my poems I wanted to perform.

Instead of explaining I was interested in dancing, I just went along with it. Excluding some very painful lyrics in my diary and a couple tumblr posts from 2014, I’d never written poetry, especially not to be performed. Tell me why I was posted up in this coffee shop, stressed out of my mind, trying to write a poem because I couldn’t just tell this girl I was not trying to read poetry to an audience.

I so wish I still had whatever journal I used to write these in. I don’t, but I do remember one concept I had that was actually semi decent. The poem wasn’t. The poem was awful. But the idea was alright.

TANGENT TIME! I kinda skimmed over the whole depressed and isolated thing, but one of the symptoms (or coping strategies depending how you looked at it) was that I would walk. A lot. After class I’d walk downtown. I’d walk all over. I’d stop in different coffee shops and pretend to do work and then walk some more. And then I’d walk home until later when I’d go for another walk along the river… the…. Mr. Schu River. My best friends, my main companions, were Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant. Josh and Chuck are the 40-something year old hosts of the podcast Stuff You Should Know. If you aren’t familiar, they pick a topic for each episode, spanning anything and everything, and do an hour or so deep dive. The week of the poetry conundrum, I listened to their episode on hibernation.

WOW TWO THOUSAND WORDS IN AND WE’VE MADE IT TO THE TITLE, FOLKS. You may already know the “truth” about hibernation, and so will find this revelation juvenile, but I was floored when I discovered hibernation wasn’t just a nice long nap. From childhood books and simplified explanations, I imagined hibernation to be a bear having a big feast and then cuddling up in a cave to avoid the cold, barron winter. More accurately, hibernation is a ridiculously taxing state in which the bear, or whatever animal, nearly stalls bodily function: heart rate and body temperature is lowered, metabolism and breathing slows. The animal emerges hungry, exhausted, and, as you can see in the image below, generally unwell.

Hibernation is not restful. It is a survival tactic implemented only when the likelihood of surviving at full functionality is low enough. This deeply resonated with me and my own understanding of the year I’d had. Aside from the walking, if I wasn’t in class I was either in my room or walking the aisles of the grocery store in a zombie like state. I’d sleep for 12, 14, 16 hours at a time. Sleeping either to avoid eating or to avoid thinking about how much I’d eaten. Sleeping to not have to think. Sleeping because I was so, so, tired. Always.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which I guess has been deemed women’s Infinite Jest or Catcher in the Rye, tells the story of an (albeit insufferable) girl who pursues a year of rest, hoping to reset her life, made possible by prescription drugs from an irresponsible psychiatrist. Her year of rest is interrupted by surprise visits from her college roommate and peppered with trips to the bodega and pharmacy. As time goes on, the line between sleep and consciousness blurs and she begins “sleep walking” through full nights of clubbing and debauchery.

I’m not really interested in doing any sort of analysis or investigation of the text. I only bring it up because reading it felt very reminiscent of those last few years of school. When I was forced into the world, sometimes after days of not leaving bed, I felt like I was in a haze. I would process conversations after they happened, unsure of what I said. It was utter auto pilot. More technically it was depersonalization.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. It is kinda like when you point to a pile of shit on the sidewalk and say “literally me lol” and your friend is like “lol” and you keep walking as you wonder if they even know how much pain you are really in. Like I could’ve just posted the hibernation bear and been like “me in college lol.” But instead I did this. Just enough so that I feel I’ve shared too much, but not enough to feel known.

*I did in fact get caught cheating for this class