Going abroad is totally weird and crazy OMG, with all these crazy people and customs and drinks, but paella tastes sooooooo good and ultimately it’s teaching me lots of valuable lessons about myself! Actually, I haven’t even left Georgetown yet, let alone the East Coast. But in mid-February I leave for parts unknown, and in the month between the start of term here and liftoff, I’m still on campus, continuing my student employment without taking a single class.
Over break I convinced my parents it was worth it to come back and covertly squat in my Nevils apartment with the promise of two campus jobs and freelance work for the City Paper. I stand before you as an interloper, living the life of the student without the life of the mind. But Eazy-E was wrong; life ain’t exactly nothin’ but bitches and money. Seriously. And if I hadn’t spent two and a half years already breaking out of the ghetto of bad student jobs, it’d actually be kind of rough.
Last semester, after a terrible stint at the Office of Campus Activity Facilities, I found the Information Booth at the front gates, which might be the best job I’ve ever had. Mind-numbing bureaucracy gave way to watching the beautiful people walk by my tiny window. Instead of stamping and filing event request forms next to a microwave and a coat rack, I give out campus maps and directions to Healy.
I started working at the bookstore on the side in December, which, despite the little green apron, gave me the most interesting co-workers I’ve had in years. I figured I was set for this month of living dangerously. Then the Add/Drop season came in like a lion and went out like a lamb, and I got dropped like a second-edition calculus book last weekend. I’m still working on that whole freelance-writing thing, although it’s kind of slow when you don’t have a whole lot of drive.
So now I’ve been here two weeks and leave in two more, and I feel even more outside the usual run of life. Working at Georgetown without classes is like trespassing, not into a place but a social order. Sure, I’ve watched a lot of movies and read a bunch of books, but the unexamined life sort of cuts you off from everything else happening on campus. It’s hard to appreciate exactly how much of our social context revolves around academics until they disappear from your daily life and yours alone.
At first you’re spending 40 hours on your feet, workin’ for The Man every night and day, and you come home to cook dinner, do dishes and play endless Mariokart, which is almost as draining. Then your roommates retreat more and more to commit heinous acts of scholarship like paper-writing and problem sets, and you’re left wondering, where have all the rude boys gone?
The answer is the realm of Important Things, and all you can do is sit in your darkened room grooving to Daft Punk by yourself and contemplating whether or not you’re a waste of space. The only half-way Important Thing you can do is work on new skills like silk-screening t-shirts and soundtracking movies (no joke), and there, I already sound like an asshole just by writing that.
A lot of people feel like they don’t belong here, but now I really don’t, and not in some existential crisis kind of way. The romantic youthful cocktail of boundless energy and zero ambition is idealized for good reason, but it only gives you a buzz as long as everyone else is drinking deep too.
Spending a semester abroad is not only weird and crazy already, but kind of lonely, and I haven’t even tasted any paella yet (or kangaroo, in my case). So, like, if you ever, uh, need a fourth for Mariokart, just give me a call or something.
