I grow restless. I don’t know why, but after twelve years of school, I think I’m finally getting tired of it. Whereas high school was filled with passionate discussion, intense learning, and plenty of creativity, college has been somewhat of a letdown. How can that be? I’ve never had an idea of what I want to do after college. I thought that college would fill me with knowledge, questions, and excitement, giving me some idea what I want to “do” with my life. Yes, it’s only the first semester of my freshman year — but still, the prospect of spending four years of my life like this makes me want to cry. I can only hope that classes pick up a little next semester. If they don’t, I may finally have found the motivation I need to go travel around Europe for a year. Or something.

The thing that makes me most restless is the that stupid question I feel I should have answered by now: Who am I? Jessica and I have been sharing our feelings of frustration with each other as we try to figure out what it means to be an adult, and what we’re doing here, in college, of all places. Isn’t it strange? In most cultures I would be an old maid, yet here I am, still a child struggling to understand my place in the world. Danah Boyd (who I discovered via Julie’s post on fear) believes identity formation is pushed into “the mid-20’s” because “peer groups are critical to identity development… [but] the bulk of youth’s lives are spent having to play by adult rules with only 3-minute passing time for sociability.” I have never been very social, but only because I chose not to be involved with my peers. I found that in the adult world, I could have (or at least listen to) intelligent discourse. But as time passes, I find myself having more and more in common with my peers. The adults have already defined their world, but we’re still creating ours.

The problem is that our world springs from theirs. It feeds off it, is a reaction to it. And although I’ve always had a strong sense of self (probably due to my lack of sociability), the adult society at large is not something I want to become a part of. Not this society, not this place, not this time. Even at Reed I feel slightly out of sync. I’m not happy with the world. I want to change it all at once, but I am totally unsatisfied with whatever small and temporary mark I can actually make.

I just watched Bowling for Columbine. How sad it is, that society can be so cold. So many people my age are having their identities actively smothered by society. My own environment has been open and loving, free of the fear that seems to pervade and enslave American society at large. Perhaps my confusion about how to establish my identity as an adult springs from never having had to defend my identity in public. Maybe that’s what I need to do now. Can I be an adult separate from that society which I disdain? Can I question myself and the world around me at the same time and still stand? These are the deeper questions I need to ask. Perhaps they need to be asked by everyone. After all, at the end of the day, we’re just following the quiet dialectic of life.