I think I'm fighting the inevitable.
It seems like everything in my life is telling to do one thing, and it all points to the same destination. Yet I'm still trying to find ways to delay or postpone the inevitable. Either by making excuses or just (conciously and subconciously) messing things up on purpose. I think it started this past summer, right after graduation. Maybe a little bit before then. Maybe it's the four coming-of-age movies I watched today, or maybe it just hit me, but I really am just trying to stay this young, naive child. It's sad really, what I'm doing. I'm trying to fight the process of growing up. Ney, I don't want to grow up.
And it scares me.
I don't want to become one of those grown child-men that are overweight and don't have a real job and flake on everything and are just a pathetic excuse for a human being. Okay, so then grow up you say. But it's not that easy.
I'm sitting in finance the other day, and I'm trying to figure out what the hell my prof is trying to say. Finance isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world to learn or teach, I realize that. But something just kinda snapped inside. I was getting more and more frustrated at my professor and at myself and at the school. I mean, why would he blabber on about rates and time sequences and bond values if he's not even teaching from the book? If the book is just useless and the midterm is going to be the excel sheets he gives us to work on which have no relevance to the book...then...why? It seems like we're teaching ourselves finance.
Again. Seriously? After the debacle that was accounting, which you can teach yourself okay, I now have to go through the entire painful process of teaching myself finance? Are you kidding me?
And that was when I realized that I needed to, but didn't want to, grow up. Yeah, life isn't fair. Yeah, life isn't going to be spoon fed to me. Yeah, I've had it really good since the beginning of my life. But com'on! Mike brought up a really good point.
"Don't fall into that trap, Scott. Stop making excuses that you don't need this and he's doing a bad job at teaching you. You know your learning something useful."
Yeah, that shut me up. It's true. This is something that I need to learn. No matter how hard and how difficult it is, I just need to suck it up and just do it. But it's hard!
See, this is what I mean. I know exactly what's good for me and what's needed for me to become a mature adult, and yet here I am whining and complaining about how hard school is and that I want to quit. I want to say that part of it is due to the fact that I haven't come across material that hasn't come easy for me in a while. I mean, at UCLA I breezed by my IDS courses. I was easily at the top of my class and did the readings and understood almost everything the first time around. And now I have to bang my head against the book to try to get these stupid concepts into my head and it's humbling. I'm just not use to that. I mean, I'm the smart one in the family and yet I can't seem to understand the basis of these foundation courses. And it's killing me.
Another factor could be that right after graduation I was expecting something like a fresh start. I was so psyched for the summer and my future. I was thinking that I could reinvent myself in grad school. Give myself a new face over the summer and change my outlook and become that awesome-chic-cool grad student that everyone wants to be. And instead, I've come to a sad realiation, that nope. I'm just still dorky Scott. People still either hate me or love me. I'm either praised for my awesomeness or chastised for my "unprofessionalism."
I think the fact that I'm upset at myself for not wanting to be a better person is upsetting me even further. It's a vicious cycle.
I'm just so tired. I'm tired of having to better myself. And I'm tired of being scared of being that grown man who's still a child. I just wish that my heart and brain would get it together and just get it over with. I feel so restless. Like I need a break from life. I don't want to go to school and I don't want to work and I just want to bum around and be useless. But I can't, because it's not what I'm suppose to be doing.
Okay now I just sound crazy. Like I can't even keep a coherent thought. Then again, this isn't really a coherent argument: I know I should grow up and just suck it up, but I don't want to.
I mean this comes from mouths of five year olds. Where they're banging their fists on the pavement, kicking and screeching.
I posted this a while ago, but I'll say it again. It's as if after college, your pushed out into the real world. And then you're expected to become this adult. This responsible, bill-paying, full-time working adult. And in reality, we're still these kids. I mean I just picture 10 year olds in their dad's suit working with the big kids, trying to make it for ourselves.
When is that turning point? When do we know what we grow up? And when does it happen? Does it just happen one day?
It's such an overwhelming thought. One of those, the world is exponentially larger than you, and your just a minute fraction of it. And yet, it all seems to fit together.
Comments (3)
Oh, honey! Are you READING MY MIND! SERIOUSLY?
Scott, I appreciate you being so honest with your own conflicted feelings of growing up that I think the rest of us are too scared to admit on a public blog, or even to ourselves.
I feel you, honey. Waiting for this girl to grow up, too. :)
In the meantime..........
SKYPE SOON? :)
love love love love love
miss you miss you miss you
xoxoxoxoxoxox
Yumi
I can't help but wonder... if you could have chosen to become anything you wanted to, what profession/field of study would you have pursued?
You don't seem to like what you're doing. I feel kind of spoiled, even.
This happens to most people in their 20s because of the whole post-college shove into adulthood. I think you just need to change your perspective on things. We're not expected to be complete adults and its not a matter of suck things up and get over your complaints. Just look at it as a process. You are a different person than you were when you were 5, and when you're 40 you will be a different person than when you were 20. I don't think anyone ever loses that side of them that is a child, but we learn to become more mature in life and that comes with time and experience. I know its hard to calm down and to take things as they come, but you just have to be satisfied with yourself and with what you're doing. Everything will be okay and all will work itself out.