Do you ever think back to when you were a kid, and what you wanted to be when you grew up? I think about that a lot. In fact, I still think in terms of - what should I do when I grow up. As I've mentioned before, I'm precariously caught between kid and grown-up in a sort of mid-life limbo. It's the student life...and it's definitely a love/hate relationship. For those of you who left it long ago, and those of you just looking for a good laugh - let me recap the key points:
1) You gain weight at an incredible rate.
It almost defies the laws of physics. One week you are doing fine and going to the gym, and suddenly you don't remember if you even have a gym membership or not and none of your pants fit. I think there is actually some sort of black hole in time that sucks you in and spits you back out fatter. Honestly.
2) You eat crap.
Not all the time. Sometimes you cook amazing things and marvel at how well you do living on your own. But sometimes - all you want is kraft dinner, or wendy's, or that sinfully delicious Falafel place at the end of the street.
3) You learn new levels of procrastination.
You would do anything to waste time. Email, talk on msn, make a snack, email, talk some more, wander over to a friends house, email, email again, and finally some msn before bed. Oh and you definitely write a pointless blog when you should be studying :P
4) Everything you own is broken, and you have no money to fix it.
For example, in the last several weeks: my sewing machine broke which required one week and $150 to fix. Gah! My pager ran out of batteries and I couldn't get the back cover off to change them. My palm pilot ran out of batteries halfway through the day at work...don't even get me started on the hell that is your life without a drug reference and a calculator! I knocked my favourite vase off the window sill and smashed it. And to top it all off MY TV BROKE!!! Words cannot describe the loss I am feeling right now. I would suggest you send flowers in condolence...but my vase is broken. I would like you all to picture me making the grumpiest face you have ever seen me make, now triple that. You are still picturing something approximately ten times less grumpy than what I actually look like at this very moment.
5) Your kitchen smells.
Ok maybe not everyone's kitchen smells. I bet mandy's never did. And melinda's. And I would say Julie but she lived with some pretty messy girls. I KNOW that marc's did. And mine does. The key problem here is that I hate doing dishes. And I'm busy. So I just throw things in the sink and hope, even pray, that some nice dish fairy is going to show up while I'm gone and wash them. And of course I don't have a dishwasher cause I live in the student ghetto and no one in ghetto has a dishwasher. This past week I didn't even have dish soap. I'm not really sure where I thought it was going to come from if I didn't go buy some...but I for sure went to bed every night thinking that the next day the problem would be solved. And now it smells. Really bad. Like science-experiment-gone-wrong kind of bad. Sigh....I would consider growing up enough to get married JUST so that I could have someone to wash my dishes, or buy me a dishwasher. Seriously.
All this got me to thinking - is that what I imagined as a kid when I dreamed of the days when I would be a grown-up? I know I pictured a house and a car and a cool job. Fun clothes. Adventurous vacations. Lots of friends. But did I picture piles of laundry and a car that needs to be vacuumed and a fridge with dying vegetables and no tv? A life of excess and poverty all at once?!?!
And then, I look at these precious pre-term babies that I am caring for in the nursery these days....and I picture their parents all full of hope and love for this new little life, and how they must dream about the future. I bet they think about their first dates, and teaching them to drive, and going off to university, and whether they will grow up to have big fancy jobs*. And then I laugh on the inside as I hold in the desperate urge to point out that in between cute childhood, and responsible honourable adult life....are the student years...where they will most likely be proud and fearful all at once. Just like the students are themselves.
Lots of love
Pamela
currently reading: Fever of unknown source in the 0-36 month old.
currently listening to: Black Eyed Peas
* I originally wrote this as 'grow up to be doctors or lawyers or something fancy'...and then when I read over it I realized - holy crap, I am a doctor! Crazy....
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