There is a frequent customer at Foodtown. He is fairly old, and brittlely thin. Almost thinner than myself (I weigh an astonishing 130 pounds). About once a week, he comes in to buy a lot of cat food. He would treat me kindly, and always inquires about the quality of my life at the given moment. He is forgetful, because he probably asked what my major about 30 times, as well as what school I attended. I should have taken more of an interest in his life as well, because then maybe I would know his name.
One day, he asked me about my major. Cinema studies, I told him. He tells me he knows someone locally in the film industry, and would contact him about a possible internship for me. I whole-heartedly thank him, but never thought he would do it. Why should he? Even if he sincerely intends to, he will probably forget about it anyway.
Wouldn’t you know it, a week later he approached my register. This time, he didn’t just have cat food for me. He had a slip of paper with a name and number. He hands me the slip of paper. “Call him.” he says.
I tell him I’m afraid it will conflict with my schedule at school. He pulls me away from the register, and speaks to me quietly, as if it is delicate information that shouldn’t be heard by the wrong ears.
He tells me, in the kindest way possible, that college is a waste of time. That the real opportunities lie in getting out there and making your own career, in meeting new people who give you little slips with names and numbers on them.
This isn’t the first time I’ve come across advice such as this, or have been granted a chance to work in the “real world”. But this is the first time a near-stranger has shown me a door, out of sheer generosity.
However, I refused to walk through it. I didn’t tell him this. In fact, I never saw him again. My colon decided to attempt suicide shortly after, and spent a couple weeks in the hospital. Not long after my return home, I quit my job at Foodtown, for the sake of college.
Somehow, I always envisioned SUNY Purchase to be the gateway to my dream career, my award-winning scripts, my blockbuster movies, a director’s chair with my name written on it.
Any experienced filmmaker would openly laugh at my face if I told them this. I know because I have, and they did.
Ever since I knew I wanted to pursue a career in film, I have been telling people I would be going to Purchase. Even after I my application was rejected the first time, I told them Purchase, for sure. Community College is just a detour. For four years I have been saying this. Then, just this past summer, I finally got accepted. It wasn’t in vain after all.
I recently came across a “tweet” on Twitter, written by director Joseph Kahn. It reads “My advice to film school student: drop out. If you can’t take huge risks, you’re fucked anyway.”
Again, I stumbled upon this advice. That I am wasting my time (and money) on my already shortened life.
Again, I ignored it.
“No,” I say under my breath. “I must earn this degree. I have to. It will be all I have to reach any amount of success I have ever hoped for. It has to be worth it. It has to.”
I don’t really believe that. Being 22 years-old, I don’t know what to believe. A lot of advice gets thrown in my direction, and it has become increasingly difficult to establish the quality ones from the lousy, to pretend advice like Kahn’s is unfound.
To simply forget school and make it on your own is not easy advice to digest. Especially with the constant uprising of unemployment. That by quitting, you are actually succeeding. It doesn’t compute in this ever-growing brain of mine.
It shouldn’t be upon me to decide the worthiness of a college degree. This is a question that will be forever pondered and discussed among the world’s most educated philosophers and scholars, from Descartes to, like, Bono.
But it is on me. At age 22. I still live my parents. They give me gas money. And, sometimes, booze money.
As I sit here, I am stressing out over an upcoming test in a “Intro to Modern Art” class. I must write four essays discussing the relevance of futurism, cubism, and other isms, as well as identify and date dozens of works of art. By that same day, I have due an 800-page article for Journalism I, interviewing people I don’t care about, on a topic I don’t care about.
This reminded me greatly of Westchester Community College, where I attended for seven semesters to earn my Associate’s. Perhaps rather unrealistically, I was under the impression that these kind of classes were community college material. The boring stuff. Purchase would be much more fascinating and brain-churning.
The truth of it is, I am terribly bored of this now. I find my brain to be on the brink of mental collapse. I simply can’t focus on things that are irrelevant to my interests anymore. In fact, that journalism paper is due soon, and it remains untouched. Instead, I chose to write about my woes, in the library. For three hours.
I realize I come off as greatly cynical, possibly even eye-gauging. Going to a place you hate five days a week certainly isn’t unheard of. Billions of people do it every day. My parents will testify to this, and it is arguably their fuel to help get me my degree. I only have no intention of making a career out of it. But it with every passing day, it becomes increasingly difficult to pretend it doesn’t bother me.
So the idea that I could, possibly realistically, drop out and college and get a head start on my career is appealing. The idea that I could waste four years of tuition hard work is not. Also, the thought of telling my parents that I quit school is not a happy one. I can see the blood-red eyes already.
So what am I to do? Take the “school is for fools” route? In hopes that an opportunity will be stupidly sitting for me at the bus stop, wondering what took me so long?
“No,” my parents would say. “Or we will murder you with our bare hands.” Harsh, but rightfully so. It’s not just my wallet that’s taken its toll, after all.
My biggest issue is that I feel I have a lot to offer, creatively speaking. I simply don’t know how to express it or prove it. Since Purchase is a 50-minute commute, being anyone on campus besides my scheduled classes is nearly impossible. Being socially active isn’t much of an option.
So I go home, and watch movies on Netflix. Every week, I try to watch at least three movies I haven’t seen before. Then, if I’m inspired enough, I write about them on my blog. I feel I get more enjoyment and experience out of the this than most of my experience of four years in college. I write better, watch movies better, and constructively analyze them better than I did when I started the blog nearly two years ago.
Anything that doesn’t involve doing any of these three things sends me into fits of anxiety and boredom, mixed with day-dreaming.
Now, I am jobless and broke, with no source of income other than my parents. Why? Things simply didn’t work out the way I had hoped. Which is fine. That happens.
Because of my school schedule, options for jobs are limited, so I must seek out my position at Foodtown once again. I am scared, because I knew I will see the thin man again, and he will excitedly ask me how the internship worked out.
Surely, I called them number he went out of his way to acquire. Surely, I wasn’t stupid enough to think I would get a better experience out of pencils and books.
“No,” I will say to him. “I didn’t call him.” I feel the cowardice flowing through my veins already. I will be grumpy for the rest of the day, so I hope the conversation at least takes place towards the end of my shift.
Less innocent bananas will be squashed that way, and less forced smiles will be given. I dislike forced smiles.
The Graduate is one of my favorite films. It stars Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin, a fresh college graduate, who’s in a bit of a post-college purgatory. There is a moment in the film when Benjamin is carelessly floating in his parents’ pool, probably for the umpteenth time. His father angrily asks him what he is doing. Benjamin responds, “Well, I would say that I am just drifting.”
I too am drifting, and I haven’t even earned my Bachelor’s yet.
That frightens me.
No, I won't quit college. I don't have the balls for that. Which also frightens me.
But then again, Kahn directed Torque, so what the fuck does he know, anyway?
