There's a crowd of people harbored in every person

For a while now, I've been meaning to start backing up my blog entries in a word document, on the off chance the various untrusting, apocalyptically Orwellian-minded internet critics are right, and someday the World Wide Web will crash, taking every cached file, facebook profile, and semblance of human sanity along with it. Considering that I rely on the internet heavily for my banking and bill pay and financial aid repayment, of course the one thing that I immediately seek to save is my blog.

Last night I sat down to finally complete this project. Which, of course, required that I delve back to the recesses of my teenagedom, seven years ago, to late 2003, when I was newly sixteen years old. I distinctly remember the afternoon I started this blog, sitting on our lumpy, old, gray couch, feet up on the coffee table in the family room of my mom's house, my then-new HP laptop warming my legs. Now, I find myself sitting on another lumpy couch, my feet on another coffee table, in a living room 50 miles away, my now-new HP laptop resting in my lap. It wasn't lost on me that, visually, the lack of progress is astounding.

But that impression of stasis is obviously an illusion. This blog was started by a goodie-two-shoes teenager without a driver's license, who'd never had a job and whose longest relationship lasted three months. Now it's being accessed by a twenty-two year old "woman" working full-time for a publishing company near the city. Semi-unwittingly, it turns out that I created a pretty detailed compendium of, essentially, my entire adolescence. All the supposedly significant coming-of-age events of an upper-middle class white girl are in here, in one form or another.

Naturally, I made a narcissistic compilation of representative excerpts from this timeline.

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01/27/04: On getting my driver's license
Well, I got my license, and in the process defied about every DMV stereotype there is. 1) I was in and out in less than an hour, 2) everyone was pleasant and/or humorous, and 3) my picture was one of the better ones I've taken in quite a while. The best part: After 2:30, I was able to go to the DMV, get something to eat, play a game of chess, and still make it back to tech before 4. If that isn't time well managed I don't know what is.

02/05/04: On my dominant extracurricular, NVHS theater crew
I'm always amused by how so many of us are so rabidly devoted to tech. For all intents and purposes, tech injures us, fatigues us, keeps us up late and gets us up early, works us for over 12 hours at a time, frustrates us, and is always the source of complaint. Yet, like moths to a lantern, we all draw to the shop day after day. Is it for the personal satisfaction of a hard day's work? The pride felt in a well constructed staircase? Or maybe just the fact that carrying around a handheld circular saw, walking next to a kid who knows how to explode things with dry ice, makes you feel at least a little bit badass?

03/16/04: On getting my first job
Well, I'm finally employed. Turning my application into Colonial yielded me a job in less than a week. And besides the comparatively extensive commute and near-minimum wage pay, I can't really complain about it, either. Yet. I officially start tomorrow, so we'll see if there's anyone I want to kill then.

04/10/04: ....
After just 3 weeks of working at Colonial, I decided to quit for Dairy Queen, which will provide me with better pay for less effort and better hours. I was pretty nervous about how I would go about the quitting process, due to a combination of a new experience and a great fear of people getting angry at me. Luckily, it went well. And I got my first paycheck.

08/31/04: On being in high school
As I've entered another year of productivity and education among my fellow school-spirited Wildcats, I can't help but notice how much my life doesn't resemble a teen movie. As things are, I'm getting increasingly closer to my own cap and gown ceremony, and not ONCE have I been part of a poppy dance routine. In fact, I've never even been wooed by the token Hot But Egotistical Jerk only to be rescued by the Possibly Less Hot But Charming Loner when the Jerk shows his true colors. Come to think of it, the last time I was rescued in any manner was probably when my age consisted of one digit and I decided that wandering off alone in a large store was a pretty good idea. Similarly, my mortal enemy has never been vengefully humiliated in front of cheering peers, nor do I have an Obnoxious Blond Counterpart to fulfill the role of said enemy.

06/26/05: On how I feel about English/writing
...It seems like a weird thing for me to complain about, but I found [a writer's] use of words like "suppositions," "afoot," "query," and "contradistictive" for every other word really obnoxious. Words were created in order for people to express themselves clearly, accurately, and if possible, wittily, and I guarantee you that the word "pulchritudinous" will never, ever aid in clearly proving a point. There's a difference between using the English language appropriately and engulfing people in ridiculous vocabulary like a monkey with a mishandled blowtorch. I'm sure with a good thesaurus and dictionary, everyone anywhere could articulate their online desideratum with abstruse lexicon in order to apportion themselves from the feeble-minded ignoramuses on the globe. But we don't. 'Cause it's irritating.
Point being, if my affection for English ever turns into that kind of pseudointellectual BS, I invite you, my adoring public, to hit me with the nearest available blunt object. Not in the face, though, my family spent a lot of money on dental care.

08/16/05: On visiting colleges
Well, I visited Northwestern today. Overall, it struck me as the Neuqua of colleges: Big, expensive, tons of activities, a trendy but ambitious population, and surrounded by a pleasant and severely groomed suburb. I think that may be why I liked it so much; it reminds me of home but on a larger scale. Of course, the price for that good old fashioned homey feeling is about $40,000 and a 7/8 probability of rejection. But hey, I could always sell a kidney to cover the former and my soul for the latter.

08/28/05: On my second job
Speaking of kids, I've decided, as predicted, to quit Build-A-Bear due to my various other more enjoyable and therefore more important commitments. Which is a bit of a shame, since my 90 day "performance evaluation" today concluded that I am, in fact, an effective bearmaker.

12/04/05: On my eighteenth birthday
The fact that it snowed significantly for the first time on my birthday made me disproportionately happy, considering it resulted in me sliding into a curb and being late for school.

03/04/06: On filling out FAFSA for the first time
A family of procrastinators is a bad combination. You really need to have at least that one tenacious, anal, go-getting future stock market analyst of the family that harps on everyone to meet their deadlines. Or else the result is these nice, sitcom-esque evenings with a mother and daughter tag-teaming their way through FAFSA the night before the deadline.

03/22/06: On my third job
I started work at the pizza place the other day. It's made me re-notice the fact that, subconsciously, I always assume that when I meet people, they automatically know who I am and what I'm like. I end up getting put off when managers treat me like Average High School Kid and not Linda. It also, then, makes me superconscious of the fact that my chances of proving that I'm Not So Much Average High School Kid might've been set back when I accidentally called sausage "pepperoni" for the better part of an hour.

05/30/06: On high school graduation
I gotta say, out of all the festivities of Graduation Week--the last day of school, the awards assembly, the brunch, practice, etc--actually graduating was probably my least favorite part. It was hot, the speeches were adequate but not overtly memorable, and I spent the hour or so it took to read all 900 names half-staring with mind numbing blankness at the stage and half trying to keep myself from being irritated with my esteemed fellow graduates snickering and chair-kicking. Maybe it was the sight of the girl standing next to me catching the corner of a violently pitched cap in the eye that finally did it in for me.

08/31/06: On my first impressions of college
5 Good Things About College:
- Having a roommate who shares in the pride and delight of successfully assembling a chair for our 5x10 "living room"
- Living on a campus small enough that I didn't actually have to make an effort to learn the whereabouts of anything.
- 12 varieties of cereal
- I appear to suffer homesickness about 84% less than the average freshman.
- An astonishingly stellar cafeteria selection has allowed my store of Ramen to remain unperturbed.

12/23/06: On thinking about my future
It occurred to me at that point that, while I will presumably someday have a "real" job (unless I pull a Beverly Hillbilly or, if I'm lucky and discover a penchant for respirators, an Anna Nicole Smith), I'll never fully live in the same kind of utilitarian real world that people like, say, Donald Trump do. Whatever career I decide on will likely in no way ever involve real estate, finances, or anything that insinuates that I make any money. I'll never fully understand the stock market, worry about the intricacies of owning a small business, or have my mind totally wrapped around immediate concerns. I'll always care more about Shakespeare than standard deviation, and as such my life will never be entirely practical.

06/28/07: On my fourth job
Sales Associate at the Dress Barn is not an ideal job. It's not even an ideal summer part-time job, though it fights comfortably in the weight class of "fine." This was made all the more evident to me when, during my 20th hour at the 'Barn in three days, I found myself excited to realize that there was one more rack of shirts that I had yet to organize by sleeve length, and as a result I had one more dangling carrot of activity to distract me from the boredom.

06/14/08: On getting an internship
Optimism®, for example, has in my own life recently transferred "unpaid internship 45 miles from my house" into "invaluable opportunity to have a trial adult life." For the majority of the summer, I'll be living in a one-bedroom condo and commuting daily to a steady, 9-5, cubicled job. Which means I get an opportunity to get a taste of what living alone and having an Office Space job would be like--minus actually really supporting myself and plus having the luxury of coming back home on weekends to curl up in my room.

11/13/08: On turning 21
Realistically, I'm probably as much of an adult as I'll ever be; I'll just hopefully get a little wiser or something over the next half century. Enough aged-30+ parents, teachers, customers, acquaintances, and strangers have told me "when I look in the mirror, I still see my 20-year-old self" for me to believe that right now, or any other arbitrary time, is about as real as it's going to get. So while I'm still open to the possibility of a Grown-Up Book Of Knowledge falling on my head at exactly 7:11 p.m. on December 1st, I'm not going to be broken hearted if the only thing that falls on me is snow. Or presents.

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Well, okay, I guess it's a compendium of my adolescence minus any discussion of emotion, friends, or boys. You can blame that on the fact that RoboLinda has always been my copy editor.

The best of the vanished marvels have gathered inside your door

Last week, I found myself lounging in my rapidly-emptying bedroom in my apartment, idly checking Facebook while the clock ate away the hours of my last full day in Bloomington-Normal. In the months, weeks, and days preceding this particular afternoon, I failed to feel much in the way of raw, nostalgic emotion about my permanent departure from campus, aside from a vague, ambivalent sadness--not a serious sense of loss, but more like the Nerf-gun twinge you feel when you find out that your favorite show has been canceled.

And so it was with somewhat of an emotional jolt that I was abruptly struck by the realization that I was never going to see IWU again--not through the casual, familiar eyes of a student, anyway. It suddenly seemed extremely important that I go for one, last walk around the campus grounds. A definitive, final stroll that would allow me to generate for myself a sense of existential closure with the university (you know, or something like that). It was a beautiful day for a walk, at any rate. Sixty-seven degrees. Sunny. Blooming. The kind of weather through which you halfway expect to hear the distant singing of tower-locked Disney princesses.

I stepped out of my apartment and set out towards the library, completely determined to walk slowly and stay absolutely focused on the memorializing task at hand. This kind of abrupt and feverish wave of dramatic emotionalism tends to hit me whenever I feel like I'm closing in on the end of a more-major-than-usual part of my life, so I entered into this venture mentally prepared. In fact, I even had a ready-made "savor the moment" procedure for such occasions: as I walked by the various campus sites, I'd simultaneously try to capture the present aesthetic moment while also invoking memories I'd previously made at those places, thereby making the experience as vivid and memorable as possible. I might be the sappiest sap of all the saps, but at least I'd be a sap with a firm and detailed memory base.

I looked up at Ames, remembering that, one or two years back, a friend and I had decided that it looked like a Transformer. At night, all aglow, it looked completely capable of rising up out of the ground and battling the State Farm building.

Walking down the sidewalk toward the front of the library, beaches of well-tended grass flowing by me on either side, I glanced to my right and caught a view of President Wilson's brick home. I never did ask if any of my friends went to that wine and beer reception at the President's house, I thought. Garrett said he was planning on it. I wonder if President Wilson prefers wine or beer. He seems like more of a beer guy. Or maybe I just assume that any guy who isn't Kelsey Grammar is a beer guy. I guess there are beers that are more "respectable" beers. You can be a snob about anything if you try hard enough. Where did--

Wait, now. Focus. By the time I snapped out of this rambling train of thought, I'd already passed Ames and was closing in on Presser. I paused and looked behind me, trying to play a quick game of catch-up on the transcendental experience I'd planned. Trees. Flowers. Windows. Minor Meyers' endearing but unnerving statue. I guess I'll just move on. Stay focused this time, you're trying to make memories.

Shaw. What an ugly building. Well, not ugly I guess, just stumpy. Definitely less pretty than most of the other buildings, at least. Why is taking the GRE Literature exam the first thing I think of when I look at Shaw? Probably because I took it on a nice day like today. I'd almost forgotten about taking that test, which is crazy considering that preparing for it was, like, all I did last summer. Man, I studied hard. I wonder if grad schools will really care about those scores. When should I start applying? I wonder when the applications will be released. Are they already released? I should look that up when I get home, it wouldn't hurt to get an early start...

Damnit, not again. I was already at CLA. Distracted and blinded by my thoughts, my pace had quickened to its normal speed and I'd blown by Holmes and Sheean. Oh well, it's not like I had any deep, meaningful associations with either of those buildings anyway.

Why was this so hard? After cycling through this pattern of distraction one or two more times I eventually reached Hansen. I chatted with Steph at Hattie's, got a large coffee, and sat for a moment outside the front doors, warming my hands through the thin cardboard cup. Looking around, watching the sun glisten through the branches of the birch tress, making animated spotted patterns on the ground, I thought about how very pretty everything was at that moment. But then again, I'd always thought IWU's campus was beautiful. I'd spent accumulated hours at dozens of various places on campus over the years, pausing and sitting, usually with coffee, thinking about how very pretty it all was and, usually, how pleased I was to be there.

The realization struck me that this, of course, was the reason that my grand, existential memory-making endeavor was a crash-and-burn failure. It was ridiculous for me to think that I could simply stroll through campus, paying attention to all the little sights and sounds as if they were new or inordinately interesting. I'd spent four whole years training my brain to consider IWU a baseline, a familiarity, an always-and-reliable given. Like a home or an occasionally irritating family member, IWU's campus was something to be unconsciously loved, cognizantly dismissed. Even if my active consciousness was getting all moony-eyed nostalgic over my imminent departure, it didn't change my automatic habits and sensibilities. The more default part of my brain had yet to come to terms with the new reality. Why should I pay attention to all this? it seemed to be saying. We'll be seeing it again tomorrow.

Resigned, I picked myself up from the Hansen steps, called my sister, and roamed semi-distractedly through the remainder of my tour before heading back to my apartment to finish the last of my packing.

[Note to my Brain: I have to admit, I never knew you'd be so slow on the uptake. I'll probably be in Evanston when you catch up. It's really a very pretty place, too, so I hope you'll take to the transition kindly.]

What rushes into my heart and my skull I can't control

College. Internship. Graduation. Relocation. Job.
Who knew my life was capable of following such a predictable trajectory?

During my freshman year at IWU, I took a 100-level introductory sociology class which sketched out the basic framework of American class distinctions and the implicit social structures and preferences that guide our red-and-blue, capitalistic universe. Like many survey courses, it provided factual data and empirical research to back up a lot of cultural norms and assumptions that most of us thought were already pretty self-evident (i.e., "Women with higher levels of education tend to earn more, get pregnant later, and are less likely to do drugs." Social scientists figured this out with painstaking research, while I figured it out by observing the staggeringly low number of female CEOs with crack babies.)

For one assignment, my professor provided us with the standard, government-approved system for categorizing class strata by earnings (i.e., such-and-such salary per year designates Donald Trump, while such-and-such per year denotes the working poor). We were to apply this ranking system to our own families by finding out how much our parents earn, locating our class designation, and then writing a paper discussing how our class standing (and its associated typical values and characteristics) shaped our lives and worldviews.

As my professor agreed at the project's conclusion, mine was a "complicated case," for even though my primary caregiver's (Ma's) technical earnings put me on the "lifetime of coal mining and food stamps" end of the class spectrum, the social milieu in which I was raised put me more in the "Prada bags and unearned sense of entitlement" range. I represented the Beverly Hillbilly Class of inherited value systems. A pinch of compulsive thriftiness from the blue-collar set, with a dash of "all possibilities are open to me" attitude from the caviar eaters.

Of course, after years of a comfortable lifestyle, upper-middle class immersion, and prized liberal arts education, I don't think there's much of a question that the "Beverly" side has, overall, won the day.

Illustratively, I was recently talking to a friend (who, incidentally, is a pure blood member of the blue-collar set) about job searching. We had both been thrown into the overcrowded pool of the soon-to-be unemployed and were lamenting our frustration at the application process. We agreed that it seemed as though most everyone we knew who had managed to score high-earning jobs or impressive, tall-building internships had done so thanks to the assistance of some professional-type family member or friend who could give them an "in." We pouted that we, ourselves, neither had the sort of connections that would lend us such a step-up, nor did it even occur to us to try--after all, getting help is cheating. You're supposed to earn what you get by your own sweat, blood, and pitifully limited resume.

According to my sociology class, this no-help attitude can be largely attributed to two things: 1) the U.S. system of education, in which any significant assistance from a higher-standing party is, strictly speaking, cheating or plagiarism, and 2) a working-class mentality, which values independent hard work and also isn't inclined to rely on a professional networking system that, typically, it doesn't have.

Yet, in the end, I did find a job. And when I did, it was due to the relationship I'd already had with S2 through being in their freelancing network, a position I'd found thanks to the internship that I had done with them, which I'd gotten via IWU and its Career Center, which had a long-standing relationship with S2, so they easily and readily connected me to the company.

The 5-7 job applications and resumes that I'd sent out to various random companies, on the other hand, have remained stubbornly ensconced in the silent black hole of unanswered inquiries.

Like I said. Beverly wins the day.