Why College is Hard

College is hard because everything that can go wrong will definitely go wrong. La la la, you say to yourself as you skip past Todd field on your way to work. Bam! You twist your ankle! Tweedle dee dee, you hum as you walk out of the exam you just finished early. Bam! When you come home the professor has sent you an email assigning everyone a thousand page paper! Dum tiddly dum, you twiddle your thumbs, only to find that the innocent cough your housemate had over breakfast was not, in fact, the result of a miscalculated sip of orange juice, but instead horrific pestilence, and you and the rest of the House sits in the living room wrapped in blankets, passing around a bag of cough drops. We blow our noses in harmonic unison.

College is hard because everybody lives together in tiny houses, and gets sick at the same time, and everyone also has to turn in giant projects and papers for every class at once, while being sick. Last year I had a professor who told me that the reason people go to college in their late teens and early twenties is because they are young and resilient and capable of pulling all-nighters. I guess so, but I'll say this: if I have to pay the government back for this college education, somebody better pay me back in hours of sleep.

Tonight I went to Shari's for dinner with Rachel. We were eating when suddenly we realized we were five minutes from missing our bus back. We threw money down on the table and high-tailed it out of there, me clutching my biscuit and munching as I ran down Union. We barely made it onto the bus, giggled the whole way home, and when we stepped off at our stop, lightfooted and cheerful, another biscuit in my pocket, I was struck by an odd feeling. What is this? I thought. Oh. It was carefree jolliness.

Wait, what? How did I not recognize freedom from worry? Am I some kind of wrinkly radioactive worry monster? What are the future implications for my nonsense-free life? And now, as I worry about this, is all my non-worry going to be tainted by worrying about the fact that I noticed I wasn't worrying about anything?