April Showers Bring...

by snaggle at 12:36 PM on April 24, 2003

Springtime has come to Iowa, complete with its vacillating weather: one day it’s 70 degrees, the next day, 40. Before I head out the door in the morning I make sure to hang out my window for a few minutes to ascertain the shifts in the weather. I used to just peek out the window at what everyone else seemed to be wearing, but that can backfire. There’s always that guy running around campus in the middle of a snowstorm in shorts, and it would be my luck that it would be this fool that I would spot out my window, dress accordingly, and then I, too, would become that guy. Just as I get frustrated at another day of sweating in unnecessary layers or freezing and wishing for the coat I left at home and I’m about to shake my fist at the sky and proclaim, “Just make up your goddamned mind!” I realize that there’s really no one around to hear me. And if there were someone who would hear me, it might be a way to get myself locked in a padded room.

But still, spring is here; that time of year that signals new growth and life has come at last, out of the deep freeze of winter. No longer must we worry our exposed body parts will be victims of frostbite as we trek across campus. Now we worry that our exposed body parts will be victims of the pigeons and crows, endlessly circling, awaiting the perfect moment to execute a drop with the uncanny accuracy of a Cruise missile. The scent of blooming trees and shrubs is filling the air with their potency of new energy. We see the bunnies hopping around, frantically trying to copulate, with an ADHD pattern: they hop, nibble some grass, hump each other furiously for 15 seconds, hop away, nibble grass, repeat...

In a college town, the thawing of the ground and warming of the air is also a harbinger of that last great rite of entry into adulthood, where we cast off the trappings and fittings of youth and stand poised to take our place in the “real world” – graduation. It’s the time of year when those who for some reason or other wish to escape the shielding arms of academia and enter into the bloodbath we call society manically try to find jobs, finish classes, and find time to commiserate in shared joy and pain over countless pitchers of beer. It’s also when many try to make up for lost time, talking to those on whom you’ve had your eye for years and then frantically trying to copulate. Luckily for some of us, namely me, I have one more year to go before I have to think about abandoning this safe harbor of school, the comforting womb of knowledge, the simulacrum of life where I can almost forget about the world of “terror threats” and “economy” and “unemployment.” I watch another round of friends try to find jobs, made all the more difficult by the lousy economy, and remember when they began school, fresh-faced and eager. Most people who know me think I should be graduating this year, and I laugh a hearty belly-laugh at their folly, momentarily forgetting that the standard convention is to go to school for only four years. Four, six, who’s counting?

It seems that the people who are graduating aren’t nearly as concerned about entering the “real world” as I think they should. They go about their daily lives, unaware that their entire structure of life is about to change. I want to protect them from the dangerous war that we call the business world and shelter them from the frightening things they will encounter. And just when I’m about to grab them and shake them to their senses with “Don’t you see what’s happening here? Don’t give in!” I realize that this, too, is probably a good ticket to a padded room, this time with a cozy jacket to wear.

Instead I sit back and watch them pull impossible hours, trying futilely to up their GPA by a few meager tenths and schmoozing with whomever they think might be able to give them an in into their field. And I smile and sit back, secure in the knowledge that I won’t have to do this for another year. Am I doing anything to ease my tension when this time comes around for me next year?

Nah.