To Be in a Time of Higher Education

To wake up to your phone buzzing. To see your old friend’s name light up the screen. To not know what to say – again. To decide to go back to sleep. To hear your alarm sound an hour later. To know the importance of starting your work. To decide to get up.

To sit down at your exams. To know the quadratic formula. To know stoichiometry. To know Latin. To know how to draw the periodic table – from memory – in cursive. To feel your phone buzzing in your pocket. To not know how to respond to months of unspoken tension. To decide to deal with it later. To go to lab. To know how to create a chemical reaction. To hear the fire alarm. To know how to perform a fire drill.

To walk down the hall. To see the flyers overtaking the walls. To see the weekly times for chess club, debate, improv, and band. To see a poster for the biennial ‘how to take care of yourself and others’ elective workshop. To know the difference between the words biennial and biannual. To know the definition of the word elective. To know you have varsity cross country practice during the event.

To drag your feet as you walk home. To feel your shin splints with every step. To want to slow down. To be reminded of cross country. To pick up your pace. To balance your textbook in your hands. To walk past the crazy lady preaching about the state of our world, the crazy newlyweds arguing, the crazy children begging to play outside. To see the words on your page. To learn their meaning.

To take a detour from your normal route. To know it’s to avoid seeing your friend. To tell yourself it’s for the scenery. To realize you haven’t actually seen him there for a while. To briefly wonder why. To feel your shin splints again. To sigh. To regret taking the longer way home.

To tiredly push your front door shut. To be yelled at for slamming it. To flop on your bed. To check your phone. To read your school email first. To see an email entitled Sad News. To open it. To read your friend’s name. To not know how to respond. To think about his messages. To know you can’t respond anymore.

To go to a job interview the next morning. To be asked what your greatest challenge was and how you responded to it. To think of the Sad News. To know you wouldn’t be able to answer the second part of the question. To say learning how to draw the periodic table – from memory – in cursive. 

Process Notes:

In writing this, I pieced together aspects of some personal experiences I have had to construct a narrative that looks into the daily life of a student in higher education. I chose to focus on the term “higher education” in my title because I thought it provided the means for explaining the type of tension I was aiming to expose in my writing: although higher education is supposed to prepare us for the world in an advanced way, it often neglects educating students on fundamentally important aspects of life such as how to take care of yourself and others. This neglected subject is what I entitled the workshop that couldn’t be attended in my assignment. I found that to be the most direct indication in my writing of the issue I am discussing; thus, when reading over my piece I removed some lines further explaining everything that was felt regarding the workshop to leave space for the reader to consider what they might feel if they were presented with it. Throughout this assignment I aimed to emphasize the dichotomy between what is learned in school and what is left out and how this impacts how we see the world and can respond to challenges that we face. The only moment of communication comes at the end of the piece in the interview. I was inspired by the way in which Adnan in To Be In A Time Of War frequently portrays the tension between what one may want to say or do and what one actually says and does and how both of these parts together give a fuller understanding of someone’s standpoint. Thus, although the communication with and loss of one’s friend in this story is known to be the greatest challenge, it is not communicated because it is not something one learns how to address. Instead the illusion that what is taught in higher education does prepare us for all of our greatest challenges in life is reinforced in the eyes of the interviewer, but hopefully not in the eyes of the reader.