Piece of Shit College Student Diary #2

Late night blog post... about the same thing again.

Last month I revisited my college campus in a misguided attempt to mourn it. It didn’t make sense as an attempt at closure. After all, there was still a summer camp for high schoolers going on when I visited. And some of the very last graduating class was still living there in summer housing. Div or Die. Meaning, finish your Div III, your capstone thesis project, by December or die. That’s when the school will lose accreditation and officially close.

So there I was, holding a little funeral for a place that’s not even dead yet. I drove three hours that day just to make that tiny funeral happen. I climbed my favorite tree, entered every building that was unlocked (not many of them), and looked at all the spots that should have been wallpapered with posters but weren’t.

I made one of my friends who lived in the area walk around and smoke seven cigarettes with me. I told her every story I could think of from my time at the school, even ones that were probably too personal for how close we were. Since the closure announcement it’s felt like all of my emotions are brand new ones, concocted just for me. I lost basically every reservation, fear, and insecurity that I had. So I overshared; giving out stories, opinions, favors, cigarettes. The world was ending, why worry?

After rambling at her for close to two hours, the worry was back. I’m transferring colleges to her school. This is real. I have to keep reminding myself of that.

I got my housing assignment a few days ago. I’m living with my best friend. We used to live on the same hall. Now we’re gonna share a room. It all just keeps getting more real.

I keep thinking about all the people I knew but didn’t know. The barista who worked Wednesday morning opening shifts at the school cafe, my coworkers who were never scheduled with me, the girl I shared smokes with when we found ourselves at the same parties, all the classmates who annoyed me, all the people I gave bruises to at hardcore shows and never actually talked to. I probably won’t ever find out where life takes them. That kills me. Eight hundred familiar faces, scattered forever. Thousands of tiny, fleeting, missed opportunities.

I keep thinking about faculty and staff, who found out at the same time as students. Eight in the morning on a Tuesday, the day after course registration. A major news article already out before we even got the email. I keep thinking of the professors I love scrambling to look for jobs, scrambling to support us, to find a way through. No severance pay and a college so broke that there's nothing to even sue for. Months of admin lying about the finances, making it seem like we could pull through, like we had years left, not two semesters. Lying to staff and to faculty and to us. I will probably never work with the professors who changed my life again. That kills me too.

I keep thinking about how different everything will be.

What will it be like, going to a massive university instead of a tiny liberal arts college? The undergraduate enrollment there is 36 times my old school’s. They’ve got grad students too. Lectures of a hundred and fifty people instead of discussion groups of fifteen. Professors who won’t be able to pick me out of the crowd of students, when I used to schedule meetings with my advisor just to bitch. I’m transferring to a school where the campus police have guns and there’s an official club for republicans. My old college got name dropped by Trump when a bunch of students burned the American flag; it’s even on the Wikipedia page.

My credits transferred but I had to switch majors. I might need to do an extra year of undergrad. I don’t know how to adjust my expectations. I’m used to no grades, no real majors, no prerequisite requirements, paragraphs of personal feedback from professors. I don’t want to have to beg to take classes across departments. I don’t want to jump through hoops to get enough credits. I had plans for projects. I was already thinking about my Div III, my capstone thesis project, even though it was more than a year away. I was planning to graduate with my concentration in mad studies, labor studies, incarceration, critical medical anthropology—focused on prison and psychiatric abolition. I can’t do that anymore. I can’t stop thinking about it.

I dream about it, and wake up desperate to go back. But I can’t.

I know I can make the life I want mine. I know I can rebuild myself anywhere. But I’m pretty fucking sick of doing it. At least I’m not doing it on my own.