This has nothing to do with whether you actually are an irresponsible idiot, though in some way or another, at that particular moment, you probably are. College students do stupid things. We skip class, get drunk, smoke various illegal substances and apparently like to disrupt things by removing our clothes and doing random things in public. We're given our first real taste of freedom in college, and it's kind of like gaining superpowers. Some choose to use their freedom for good and become responsible overachievers, while others use it lay waste to their childhood.
It's a hard balance to find, and it seems like a lot of college students lead double lives as both the focused academic and the young adult trying to enjoy their youth. There are moments when you feel like you really have everything in your life together, when you're sitting in class participating in a discussion and you know what you're talking about and you're passionate about it. You feel smart, you feel like you deserve to be in college, and you're not just some unambitious idiot here to get laid.
But then you do something stupid. You wake up and discover you've slept through the class you've already missed three sessions of because you were sick. You go to the mall and realize you should have been working on a project that was due the day before. You have to drop a class because you're not doing well. You fail to get to your advisor on time. You spend the week hanging around your friend's place instead of writing a paper. You lose paperwork. You accept a mysterious, unlabeled brownie from somebody and there goes your productivity.
None of these seem like particularly terrible offenses, but when it happens, it can make you feel horrific. You desperately want to prove to the world that you are a responsible, intelligent human being, but you can't seem to stop yourself from being stupid.
We live in a very contradictory environment. We constantly point out that academics don't mean everything. How many times have you heard that Einstein did poorly in school? And yet, we put so much emphasis on them. It's like it doesn't matter how responsible and overachieving you are...except that it defines the rest of your life. You can't sit there after doing something stupid and try to comfort yourself with "Einstein did poorly in school" because, you know, you're not Einstein. The sheer amount of people who seem to balance being stupid and intelligent at the same time would seem to negate the idea that it can't be done, and it makes like you feel like you don't deserve to be considered intelligent because you can't.
Of course, none of these observations are particularly unique. We all know that college students are stupid, and that the ones that succeed are the ones that manage to rise above the typical stupid college kid cliche.
It's lent right now. I don't observe it, I'm not a Catholic. But I do live with one, and I know that, on a basic level, it's about resisting temptation.
College is like lent.
You're suppose to give up being stupid, being irresponsible, and being immature. You're supposed to devote the energies you would use to pursue these vices towards focusing on your schoolwork and being a responsible student. Some people, the faithful and the focused, pull this off beautifully and manage to avoid the things they're supposed to, and find ways to enjoy themselves in the process. Others fail miserably.
The question, like the question of accidentally eating meat on Friday, is whether or not giving into the temptation to be irresponsible makes you a bad person.
I don't think so, but that's just me. I'm in college, I'm an irresponsible idiot. Who knows if I'm right?
This bit of college angst brought to you by,
*Nelly*
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