A Really Important Post

One of the problems with blogging as infrequently as I do is that I've started to feel like I should have something significant to say when I actually get around to writing.

I need to get over that. I've never been the "blow up and spill your guts in the heat of the moment" kind of person. I need quiet time to think and a little bit of space before I can react to things that happen in my life and in the world. By the time I manage to squeeze that in, everything I have to say feels like old news.

Yes, this blog post has been tumbling around in my head for over a week. It started out when I went to hear the speaker who addressed the freshman class at the college where I work. He had some really good advice, and I thought that I should share it with my baby cousin, who is about to start college as well.

I've always referred to my youngest cousin as "my baby cousin." Once she reached the age of about eight, I added the explanation, "I was already in college when she was born, so that's why she's my baby cousin." It seemed necessary somehow, especially when I started telling people about things like her getting braces and going to the senior prom.

I originally started this post as "Advice for My Baby Cousin As She Starts College." The first two lines were: "My baby cousin starts college next week. She is my baby cousin, of course, because I was in college when she was born." And then I stopped, thought about what that meant, and seriously considered dipping into the bottle of tequila that's been sitting beside my coffee table since the Grizzlies were giving me fits in the third round of the playoffs.

It's not that my baby cousin is the first child that I've watched grow up into adulthood. The children that I baby-sat for as a teenager are now hiring their own babysitters (hopefully they're paying them more than I made). The shy junior high student who volunteered in the theater where I worked when I first moved here just took her son to kindergarten for the first time. I've watched nine years' worth of seniors star in their final high school plays and go off to college. This shouldn't be new to me, but somehow it is.

So what advice do I have for my baby cousin? "Do as I say, not as I did." Get out of bed, go to class, ask questions, and don't be afraid to talk to the people who can help you. Coffee is your friend; cheap champagne is a powerful enemy.

College is important, but only because it prepares you for what comes next. It took me almost four years to figure that out when I was there. One night I had reached what I was sure was the end of my rope: standing on the front steps of my eating club, smoking a cigarette, realizing that there was no earthly way I was ever going to finish my senior thesis on time. Then it hit me: in two months, I'd be graduating (I hoped), and two months after that, no one but me would even remember what my senior thesis topic was. The single biggest concern in my life at that second wasn't going to matter at all by the end of the next summer. What would matter by then (although I didn't know it at the time) was figuring out how to survive my new job, adjusting to life in a new part of the country, and struggling to accept the fact that my grandmother wasn't going to live long enough to finally teach me to make spaghetti gravy when I came home for Christmas.

The other advice I have I'm going to steal from the guy who got me started on this idea. "Decide what you want to do, not what you want to be." It might sound fun to be a doctor or a lawyer or an actress, but if you don't want to do the work that those people do -- and not just the fun parts, but all of it -- then you're going to be miserable. And you don't have to figure it out in college. I certainly didn't, and I guess I turned out OK.