Today was one of the hardest days since coming back from Germany, and I'm going to try to explain why but I won't promise that it will make any sense. Anyone who knows me knows that I love college, college is what I'm good at, and I've always said that I just want to go to college the rest of my life. I willingly admit that I like homework, and I take hard classes for fun. Apparently that stage of my life ended when I went to Germany. In Germany, I discovered something new: it's called a social life. I never really had homework at Dortmund and each of my classes only met once a week, leaving me with empty evenings and 4 day weekends. Instead of sitting in my room reading, writing papers, and sleeping, I actually went out with people. I watched movies with my neighbor, I went downtown and walked around just for fun, I went to student bars, I traveled with people, I danced at the diskos. The most stressful thing I had to worry about was missing the train, and I didn't have the academic pressure that I have here at Maryville.
While in Germany, I forgot how stressful my American life is. I forgot how to study. I forgot how to sit down and read 50+ pages a night and answer really deep questions about themes, language, and symbolism. I forgot how to stay in one place. Every freshman in college must learn something very important: how to balance their academic and social lives, and I am having to learn this as a senior because it is the first year that I have had a social life. Before, the only thing that mattered was getting the grade, but now that I've lived in a world where socializing was a major aspect in my life, I can't go back. I want to meet people, I want to catch up on the college life I've missed, but I have to take hard senior-level classes, write thesis, try to keep up the GPA I've worked so hard on. What I really want to do is drop everything and go to a random European country--that luxury was such a big part of my life in Dortmund. When things got stressful or I started feeling restless, I just left. I went to 8 different countries and countless different cities while I was abroad--I got accustomed to being surrounded by things that were new and different and now I'm surrounded by the same old Maryville College that I've delt with for years. I can't concentrate, nothing can keep my attention. How can Wordsworth and Shelley compete with Bratislava, Vienna, Munich? I feel very trapped now. I can't travel. I can't just walk to a bar with my friends. I can't cook my own food (I really got used to having a kitchen). I can't dissapear for a weekend. I can't just go to class, participate, and get an A. I can only speak in one language.
Ultimately, I'm not sure what to do. I keep hoping this feeling will pass--I will readjust to my Maryville College life. But I also keep wondering if I want to.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)