First semester of Senior year is the most stressful time in a High School student’s life. College is looming, school is challenging, and days begin to blur. Weekends are not used as a period of rest, but of homework completion, test prep, and college touring.
College Tours.
As of September 15, I have been on ten tours. But I’m not an r&b artist on tour. I am a terrified child, who believes his future is dependent on college and, as a college tourist, that his trips to Montreal, D.C, New York, and Boston are imperative to his success. Cambridge is a fantastic place to grow up. Harvard and MIT are in our backyard, and other excellent schools lie in Boston and the surrounding area. The touring is easy, close, and relatively stress free. So I toured like a rabid scholar. After my seventh tour, however, the importance of college and the process associated with it began to diminish. In short, I became somewhat of a college tour pro. As a college tour pro, I know their scripts cover to cover. “I’m going to be walking backwards so If I’m about to bump into anything…,” or, “Your roommate surveys are used in order to place you with the most compatible roommate, sort of like online dating.” That one always gets a laugh. I play along, an unenthusiastic automaton feigning a good ole time. It seems that, after taking all these tours, the veil of awe was removed, which left me with the sinking feeling: So what the hell do I do now? Rather than feeling gung-ho at the prospect of entering a new place, I feel disenchanted, lost.
On my latest tour, to a beautiful school just outside of Boston, I decided to focus more on the other college tourists, rather than the always humorous tour guide pumped full of “original” jokes that always seem to be awarded with pitying and nervous laughter from the other veterans, and more genuine, yet still undeserved, chuckles from the rookies. As the contingent grudgingly trudged down the pretty path and learned of the interesting meal plan, I examined the group. It was pretty average, consisting of fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, mothers, fathers, and daughters, mothers, fathers, and sons, fathers and sons, and mothers and sons. That’s the group. That’s always the group. Bored, I examined the crew’s feet. Pudgy feet, skinny feet, the usual feet. Then I noticed something that sent me sprawling against the railing of the “Has anybody seen Harry Potter? Tell me if you recognize this…” artifactual look alike. Did I mention that it sent me sprawling.
They all matched. Their shoes, that is. Father and Daughter wore Sperry’s, mother and daughter wore Sperry’s, father and daughter wore Sperry’s. In every group, someone wore Sperry’s, save for the Tory Burch family and my own family duo (we wore Toms and Dansko clogs, don’t even get me started on Dansko clogs). I don’t know why it struck me, but it did. And suddenly, the inkling of a thought gave way to a idea. An idea captured in the single, adjectival word: Uniform.
Uniformity not of the colleges, but of the tours. Uniformity not in the school, but in the “selling” of it. Uniformity not of the tourists, but of their “college tour appropriate” footwear. The general outline of any tour across the country is similar, varying only slightly by a lame joke here and there, or by a slightly interesting fun fact about the campus, school president, or sports program.
I began to notice this uniformity in more than college tours. There appears on the face of many things, I noticed, a certain selling point or artificial crux off of which one’s entire perception of the thing is created. But, touring the colleges and exploring, on my own self designated recovery interludes, other parts of the schools, I realized that colleges consist of far more than meets the eye. As do many other things consist of far more than meets the eye. Especially when something is on show, is meant to be seen by you, it is often a show. Dig. Dig at what you think is. You may find that there exists more than what you think.
No comments:
Post a Comment