The Attack of Real Life

It suddenly hit me today, on day four of my term this year, that my life is suddenly, quickly and unintentionally falling into place.

I didn’t intend for this to happen. In fact, I’ve put it off as long as possible. I’ve spent my time at the University of Winnipeg putting in just enough work to do well, avoiding every major student organization, taking enough courses to be a full time student but not enough to have to work too hard, and spending a year having fun on an exchange. Seriously. That’s about it.

But suddenly this year real life has started sneaking up on me. The old questions from people outside of the system have shifted from variations of the classic, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” to the much scarier, “And your plan for next year is…?”

This happens to be a terrifying query. Answer it wrong and you will never be taken seriously again. Answer it right and if you don’t follow through with it you still won’t be taken seriously. My answer to this for the past six months has been that I’m going to open a cupcake emporium. I figure this is the only way to make relatives back off. But the truth is, I don’t have a plan.

I had one once. In high school, it was carefully thought out. I was going to finish my four year degree in three years at the University of Winnipeg and promptly go to Osgoode Hall in order to come out as a cutthroat lawyer with all sorts of exciting career prospects before I was twenty-four. Maybe I would have a dog.

Then I realized that this plan was highly flawed. There was no way I was ready to go to law school or start a career before I’d even had my quarter life crisis. So instead, I embraced a carpe diem lifestyle. I didn’t spend any significant amounts of time on campus and in my first couple of years many of my friends weren’t in my program or even at my school. But the fact that I was a student allowed me use all of the excuses that go with it: for example that I’m more concerned about what I have to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning and the two hundred pages I have to have read for my Thursday seminar than my plans for next weekend. This response works pretty well when given to non-students and you can usually squeeze some sympathy out of it too.

Except, eight months from now, I can no longer use this excuse. And to make it worse, this excuse has started to be legitimate. In the last year or two I’ve finally found my niche and honestly cared about my degree and the people I’ve met who are a part of it. Class has become something I enjoy and put effort into. I like spending time bumming around the university. And just as I started feeling this way I realize that this coming May, I will be A Graduate. Now, every single person I know who has graduated in the last year or two has spent the summer afterward randomly traveling or watching soccer. With the exception that there is little money in my bank account for travel and that there is not a soccer cup scheduled for next summer, this is also my fate.

So this is my last chance to really relish the lifestyle of an undergrad. And I plan to fully embrace it. Because as unintentionally as my years here have quietly slipped by I have been shaped by them and I am going to miss this place; even the uncomfortable chairs and windowless rooms and annoying lighting. Using the great student fallback that next summer I will travel by “writing a book,” when real life hits me, I will think back upon the U of W fondly, and until then I’m looking into being a career student.