When I put in my two weeks’ notice at my table-waiting job two weeks ago, it was with at least one eye on fall break. I was lucky — not only in that I got someone to cover my shift on what should have been my last day — but that a generous friend had offered to let me and several others spend the break at his beach house in Florida.
It might seem a little extreme to quit a job that was good to me all summer for the sake of a three-day getaway. In my defense, fall break wasn’t the only factor in my decision.
But in the week or so leading up to the break, I found myself falling into a mental trap that’s probably familiar to a lot of students — the impending vacation became an excuse not to exert any effort.
“Everything might be going to shit now, but it’s too late to do anything about that,” I told myself, “But after the break, I’ll turn it around.”
Somehow, in my head, the promise of a pleasant weekend on the beach had transformed itself into some kind of opportunity for redemption. Instead of working on my time management and using a mini-vacation as a reward for dealing well with my various responsibilities, I told myself the really meaningful experience I was sure to have in Florida was what was really important.
This is representative of a problem I think a lot of us have as college students. Movies and t.v. feed us two disparate ideas: that college is where you become, or maybe find out, who you will be for the rest of your life, and that college is where you go to have a great time.
So naturally, we think the two are linked, and we assume that in the course of ceaseless partying, we’ll attain that self-knowledge that will ultimately make us happy and well-rounded people.
While that may be true for some people, I’m learning it’s not going to work for me, and won’t for many others.
My ability to get drunk and make an ass out of myself has never been a weak point, so it was foolish to think a weekend of bumming around on the beach was going to lead to some serious self-improvement. But it’s an easy idea to buy into, isn’t it?
Think of all the portrayals of young people you’ve ever seen in movies. Rarely is it an honest appraisal of their weaknesses and hard work that allows them to overcome their own problems. It feels almost natural that we should have some kind of life-changing epiphany after a drama-fraught spring break in Cancun or cross-country road trip.
Reality, as usual, is less exciting and more time-consuming than the movies. My problems with juggling everything are going to take more work than sitting on a beach for three days with a High Life in my hand.
Gordon Brillon is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Lincoln, R.I.