Sliding Doors — Remember that movie?
Has anyone ever seen that movie from the 90s, Sliding Doors? For those of you who never saw the movie, the main character’s life is re-examined based on whether she misses a subway. The movie explores what happened when she caught the subway and what happened when she had to wait for the next train. I think about that movie a lot. All these years later. What does that say about me?
I have always wanted to be a writer. I majored in creative writing in college. People laughed at me. How are you going to get a job with that degree, I was asked. I went to well known Big Ten school and I was majoring in that? At the time, I was more than thrilled to put math, science and any type of hard subject behind me. After taking some core freshman courses I could kiss those subjects goodbye. My academic advisor wanted me to get a Ph.D or consider law school. No way I said. I hated school, except for the social part. I was one of the lucky kids growing up. I did not study and was able to maintain a decent B+ and took academic courses. I often did my homework a few minutes before it was due. I cut a lot of classes, even my AP classes. I scored high on AP tests and SATs. I really had it pretty easy. Then I went to college and I actually had to attend class. That was a problem for me. My first semester of school I almost flunked out. Cutting class meant I missed the announcements of when tests were rescheduled or when papers were due. And Big Ten schools were, well, big. At the age of 18 I was just a SSN. I went from a tiny high school where everyone knew everyone else, to attending a school where core courses were held in concert halls and the person teaching the class was lecturing to a few hundred kids. It was really impersonal and all of a sudden the small town I had hated growing up in seemed oddly comforting. People cared. Here I was just another kid struggling to make friends, figure out the school and its culture and sharing space with a bunch of strangers that all seemed to know someone from their high school.
I had wanted to go to art school but my dad nixed it. He thought a degree from art school would turn out to be pretty useless when I graduated and would be applying for jobs that actually made enough money on which to live. I liked to write so he thought that was a little better (but not much) than art school. My high school guidance counselor suggested a few Big Ten schools (as I had mentioned I wanted to go to a “really big school” that was well known. I thought I was done with small towns, small schools and everyone in your business. I wasn’t sure I would get in to this school and when I did, that was that. I was waitlisted at another college, but even if I had been admitted there was no way I would have been able to go as tuition there was a lot more than my parents could pay. Where am I going with this story? And how does it tie in with Sliding Doors, you might wonder?
Simply put, attending that college was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life. The college was smack in middle of the Midwest, and for someone who had grown up about an hour out of NYC I was completely out of my element. Have you ever heard of cow tipping? I never did until I went to college. And when someone explained it to me I thought they were kidding. And the poor cow. I was like who does that? Who would even think this was funny? The food in the dorm seemed pretty unappetizing, and Miracle Whip in tuna salad instead of mayo almost caused me to throw up my first week at school. I realized I had made a major mistake by going to this school. Not that I was a mini sophisticate at that time (nor am I now). I had no clue why the girls in my dorm would style their hair and put on a ton of make up but wear sweats. Didn’t that defeat the purpose? And I was tired of people asking me why I “got dressed up” to attend class when I was wearing jeans, sneakers and a sweater. Really? I felt like I was living in another country. The food, the clothes, and oh yeah, the Holy Rollers. Lots of evangelicals, which was something I was never exposed to growing up in Northern Westchester. I am not particularly religious; I respect other people’s religions and basically mind my own business and don’t tell others how to live. I was raised as a Catholic but according to one of my friends from Ireland I was a Cafeteria Catholic (more on that later). In general though, I’ve always been a live and let live type of person. So I really did not appreciate being told I was going to burn in hell for various individuals who actively recruited on the campus and had public sermons in courtyards and other outdoor spaces.
I should have gone to a small liberal arts college, probably in Boston or at least the Northeast. I was like a fish out of water in the Midwest. I did not fit in and when people found out I was from NY they assumed New York City and treated me in a way that was not friendly. A lot of my peers at that school had some variation of brown hair and light eyes and I was dark haired, dark eyed and olive complected. My first week at the dorm one girl came up to me and “No one knows what your are.” I asked what she meant (I was so naive). Then she asked me where I was from. I told her New York State, a small town about an hour out of NYC. She came back with “No, I mean where are you from not where did you grow up” and it was then that I understood she thought I was not from the US. At that point I think I probably disengaged since for the most part I try to be non-confrontational but it really rattled me. I had come from a high school where I had a lot of friends, and went to a lot of parties (I think I drank more in high school than at any other time in my life) to a college where people thought I looked different, sounded different, dressed different and ate different food. It really was my first lesson in discrimination and to this day it pisses me off. It was going to be a tough four years.
So my first blog entry here and tie in to Sliding Doors is that maybe my life would have been better had I attended a different college. All my high school friends were having a blast at their colleges. And they had all remained on the East Coast. While I was counting the days until the end of the semester, they were having the time of their lives. They made deep lasting friendships and seemed to transition to the college environment with relative ease. Unlike me. I was miserable. A fish out of water. I missed my friends from high school and hated where I had chosen to go to school. College was not a happy time for me. To make a long story short, I did try to fit in. At first I thought maybe the dorm life was just not the place for me. I went thru sorority rush as a sophomore. My second semester of my freshman year I became involved with a guy who went to a nearby, smaller college who was the social director of his fraternity. He suggested I go thru rush in the fall; that maybe I would find my place socially by becoming part of the Greek Life at my school. And I took his advice. I went thru rush, at least the first part of it. I actually did well. I had figured out which sororities I wanted to join, and threw myself into the whole process. I was still depressed and I still missed my high school friends, and my high school life, TBH. I poured a lot of energy into the whole sorority thing, and not enough into the reason why I was at college: to get an education. My class cutting caught up with me. I managed to cut less classes, show up for the exams and turn in the papers but alas, my professors penalized me for not attending class. Which in retrospect they had every reason to do so. I also was arrested, finger printed, took a mug shot, was kicked out of my dorm (and almost expelled) and no it was not drug or alcohol related. I created a really big mess for myself and spent the rest of my college life digging out of it.
So IMO I think picking the wrong college was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I played a large role in how things turned out at college. No denying that. But I wish someone had taken the time to explain to me how jumping from a tiny school and a tiny town into a huge Big Ten school in a different region of the county was probably not the best idea. On a more positive note, following graduation, I found a job in NYC and today have a decent career. I was probably able to get interviews right out of college because my school was so well known. And I was lucky to be able to convince potential employers that I would be a good fit for the position I applied for even though my final GPA was hardly impressive (I retook course over the summer and learned the hard way to attend class). College should be fun. Or at least you should be able to look back on it with some pleasant memories. I look back on college and wonder how different my life could have been if I had not picked a school with which I was so incompatible. You know how when you work at companies you need to do some background and figure out if you could be part of their culture? It’s the same for colleges. But no one told me that. And the school I went to? Most other alumni I have met over the years since I attended all really loved the school. It was me. Not the school. I did not have the tools to deal with being so far away in another part of the country at that time. My frustration at being in a situation where I felt so out of place no doubt was evident to everyone around me. I finally tried to “make lemonade out of lemons” my last year at college and was somewhat successful. My grades were good, I had made a few friends. But after graduation I never went back. I wanted to forget that part of my life. And for awhile I did.