Oh where shall I go!? Oh what shall I do!?
Frankly my dear members of the Class of 2010, I don’t give a damn, and nor should you.
Well, that is not quite true. You and I do give a damn, nay, many a damn. As a sizable portion of us face the hopelessness of joblessness, it is difficult to avoid asking ourselves and everyone around us where we shall go and what we shall do.
Some will tell us that what we are looking for will come. Others will give us a copy of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” and send us on our way with the promise that we will succeed (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed). Maybe they are right, or maybe they are lying right to our face, laughing internally at our misfortune. Either way, we should not listen.
There is nothing to be done apart from sending out applications and receiving rejection emails; or rather, waiting to receive rejection e-mails that companies do not even have the decency to send out. Consequently, it would be prudent to put a moratorium on discussing or even thinking about the future during weekends and after sundown on weekdays.
The day of reckoning is upon us; the end of college is near. This means no more living within seconds of your friends, no more Fridays off, no more taking classes for the fun of it and no more free access to seats in Cameron Indoor Stadium that I expect some would pay thousands to have. No more summer vacations, spring breaks or fall breaks. No more Wednesday Night Drinking Club or Big Beer Thursdays. And most definitely no more LDOC, Tailgate or Shooters.
And what will we get in exchange for relinquishing these privileges? People judging you for going out that hard on a Thursday night, and a hang-over at work on Friday. At 9:00. AM. And that’s not Pacific Time or some sort of metric time; it’s the real 9:00 AM.
I have glaringly omitted the good that can come after graduation and the bad that can come before. Surely, independence of a magnitude we have never known could be nice, and I have already chronicled on these editorial pages that the Duke bubble can be suffocating at times. In fact, if you were to read through my previous columns you would realize that I am far from a Duke cheerleader.
I do know, however, that after graduation the vast majority of us will never again have the chance to live and learn as we do here. Our last days at Duke should be spent enjoying the time we have left rather than lamenting the future—even if that future may be bleak.
Carpe diem, I say, but not in the “this day is beautiful so I should seize it” kind of way. Rather, carpe diem in the “each subsequent day from this day forth may and probably will be worse, so we should carpe some diems now while we still can” kind of way.
There will be ample time for wallowing in misery later. Perhaps we will find time for it while waiting for the bus that we’ll take to pick up our checks on the first of the month. Or maybe it would be appropriate to wait until we are in those long hospital lines we were promised when we signed onto that public insurance option. If they actually were to exist, then that would be the perfect time.
Until then however, put on the blinders to the future in spite of that impending doom feeling that casts its ominous shadow over all that you do. That feeling is real, merited and it is not going away. It is best then not to think about it or to ask about it. Ignoring it? Entertaining some good ol’ self delusion? Those sound about right until we emerge from the safety of college into reality.
Those companies, those medical schools, those law schools, those graduate programs, those fellowships, scholarships, internships and externships will have their day to ruin your life. Don’t let them have it now. Where shall you go? What shall you do? To that I put my hands over my ears and LALALALALALALALA, I can’t hear you!
Jordan Rice is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Thursday.
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