Mr. College

I got about a million-and-one “likes” from my Facebook buddies when I announced that I had started grad school. Not surprising, I suppose. The words “grad school” carry a certain weight to them. It’s a phrase that’s bound to impress people, even if you’re headed back to the classroom just to learn the finer points of sword swallowing for your career as a freak-show street performer. But here’s what they don’t tell you when you re-enter college after a prolonged absence: It feels really weird.

The mechanics of it are the same. There’s a classroom, and desks, a chalkboard and a projection screen. There’s you with a notepad and a $40 textbook. There’s an instructor, and the odd smell of fresh plastic as newly-laminated posters are tacked up in hallways, advertising student productions of “Springtime For Hitler.” Familiar stuff, all of it.

What’s disorienting is that everything outside of the classroom has changed drastically. Heck, I haven’t done this in about 12 years, and what a 12-year period it’s been. Back then I was an irresponsible kid living in a dorm room that smelled like popcorn and Heineken; now I’m an adult living in an apartment that smells like popcorn and Löwenbräu. Back then the most impressive thing I’d ever accomplished was stuffing about a dozen marshmallows into my mouth at one time; now I’m in the midst of a career, albeit one I’m looking to change. Pretty much the only thing that’s remained consistent is my obsession with heavy metal and old-school video games featuring cartoon hedgehogs and plumbers. There’s a limit to how much of your youth you can cling to when you’ve got more gray in your fur than a Siberian husky.

All of this converges on me when I’m sitting in that class. I’m working in the present, which is a throwback to the past, to achieve a better future. It’s like I’ve arrived at some pivotal fulcrum in the space-time continuum, one in which all epochs of life meet at a single point. At times it’s hard to pay attention to the lecture when I’m being crushed by the metaphysical weight of it all -- although to be fair, there’s a chance I’m way overthinking this. That’s another thing that hasn’t changed.

It all boils down to feeling out-of-place. The other students in class aren’t bald. They don’t have bad backs. They have low-pressure jobs in campus libraries and Hot Topics and receive care packages via post from mom and dad. My own post-adolescence wasn’t that long ago, but the wealth of experiences I’ve amassed since then has served to erect a brick wall between me and the other students; I should be able to relate, but I can’t. You can go home again, but the reflection you see in the mirror won’t be the same.

In 2003 I was enrolled in a video editing class at my old alma mater. Our final project was to shoot and edit a music video, which I knew even then would go down as my favorite class assignment of all time. Even as the details were passing my instructor’s lips I could see the project in my head: A mash-up of staged shots and candid shenanigans from my testosterone-fueled social life, set to the music of Metallica’s “Sad But True.” During a friends’ hangout the subsequent weekend, I explained the assignment to my buddies, held up an old analog camcorder, and said to the group, “Shoot whatever you see tonight. If something’s happening, pick up the camera and point it at the action. I’ll do the same. The best bits will make it into the video.”

Among a certain group of people, the results have become legendary. I’m not entirely sure how I did it -- latent genius would be my guess -- but the clip somehow encapsulates the heady free-for-all that characterized our early 20s. So much jostling and jockeying around. So much misguided energy. So many cigarettes.

Every time I watch it I’m transported back to a very specific time and place. Sweet memories, those. But see, that’s the trap: With a certain era of my life so pristinely fossilized, it’s easy to over-contextualize and over-compare. “Sad But True” was completed at a time when my primary responsibilities were homework and not letting my goldfish die. When I do homework now I have to balance that with bills, rent, car repairs, physical therapy, a career as a healthcare journalist and a penchant for message board debates about the new Megadeth lineup. It’s hard to tell from that old music video that I’d actually go on to carve out an adult life for myself, but here it is. Here I am.

My classmates are so fresh-faced they should be on a bottle of fabric softener. Part of me -- the “Sad But True” part -- wants to fist-bump them and ask if they’d like to meet up at 1 a.m. to grab some Taco Bell. The other part, the quasi-mature part, wants to zip up their coats and remind them to eat their vegetables. It’s an awkward position to be in. Past self and future self are staring each other down, each a little wary of the other.

Life is cyclical in ways you don’t always expect. Earth spins on its axis and brings us around to the same point again, only we’re a day older, a day wiser, with one more layer of foundation drying beneath our feet. That becomes ever clearer when I enter that time warp of a classroom and lick the tip of my pencil, steeling for one more go-’round.

But while the past and present live in uneasy harmony, the future has yet to be written. Of all the lessons I’ve learned this past month, that’s been the most important. Time is a boat. We’re the captains. And that’s all right with me.