Lost gladiators in the coliseum of academia

There’s an odd, pervasive murmur that seems to follow myself and many of the seniors that I know. It sighs, “I’m tired.” It whispers, “I feel diluted.” It moans, “Get me out of here.”

I think the biggest contrast I’ve seen between who we were four years ago and who we are now is the difference between our once bright-eyed, unreserved selves and our current bleary-eyed, jaded selves.

That’s not to say we’re solely and absolutely filled with discontent or indifference. But something happens to you when you become fixed, static, in an institution that once felt monumental and large — an institution that now seems like it has shrunk to the quadrants of four blocks and four years and feels more like a bubble than a balloon that can lift you anywhere.

Routines can drain. Progress, when slotted a number of 15 credits and 50 minutes in a classroom five times a week, becomes a reflex.

Sure, there are moments, respites, that dot our years here and break up the Georgian brick and white marble. There are vacations, Spring Fair, holidays, internships that take us off campus and programs that take us out of the country. These moments let us “breathe” — they give us a chance to distance ourselves, loosen the leash. But they’re all still part of this system. They’re cracks, but they’re still cracks embedded in the brick and marble.

And yet, we’re not ungrateful, although many of us are scared of coming off that way. But, as one of my friends puts it, “It feels like Whose Line Is It Anyway — everything’s made up and the points (grades) don’t matter.” We’re working toward something that validates years of work but that depreciates in value every year Every year a college education becomes less noteworthy, and every year we don’t “use” it, its worth wanes.

It’s a system. It’s a system that we are a part of. It’s a system that’s meant to serve as many people as possible rather than serving individuals to the fullest extent. And that’s all good in its utilitarian sense, but it produces a disconnect for the individual.

The system works, though, for many people. One knows what they want, fulfills certain criteria, produces a certain input and receives a specific output. It’s top-down. One is also given the devices to build oneself. You don’t know what you want, but here are packages, toolboxes, you can use to create a product. It’s bottom-up. But where is the in-between? Where is the fluidity? Where is the unfettered howl?

At one point, it feels like you’re doing things not for yourself but for the system, to get by in the system, to fulfill your role in the system.

This disconnect in the individual, I think, stems from the belief that this institution provides boundless opportunities for us, but at the same time leads us into functioning by its unalterable machinery.

But we chose this machinery. We all chose to be here, and we’re all studying in departments we’re interested in and that represent a part of ourselves. But then why does it feel like our individuality is put on a back burner? Why does it feel like we’re so disconnected from ourselves, our other passions? Why do we feel invalidated, a little bit like a herd of sheep, cheated, jaded?

We’ve been focused for so long on this one, singular part of ourselves, the part that we’ve been told matters the most, the part that leads to a career and financial security. We’re tired. And we’re lost.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez writes, “The search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it’s so hard to find them.”

We’re in this routine and we’ve lost a dimension of ourselves. We’ve looked back and retraced our everyday steps, but we can’t find it. And that’s because we’re retracing the rigid pattern of this machinery, not the steps that deviated from it that helped create that individuality in the first place.

Another friend told me, “The culmination of all of this is something we’ve been idolizing since we were young. But this is it. And it’s disappointing.”

We’re so close to the end, the summation of all the points that may or may not matter, that we can’t handle it anymore, and it manifests itself in boredom and indignation.

This is it. But it’s clear that in two months the thing we’ve been idolizing isn’t going to be close to ideal. We’ll still be filled with this disconnect of who we were before college, who we were during it and who we’re supposed to be after.

I don’t know if this disconnect, this ennui, will dissipate as we accelerate toward graduation. I don’t know if this dissonance is a bad thing or what it could produce or will produce. I can’t say that I won’t feel like this institution is monumental and large again once I join its abounding alumni network. 

But I hope, despite how we feel now, that we will all run onto that stage, screaming at the top of our lungs, letting out an unfettered howl while a crowd greets, in camaraderie, each graduating gladiator.