Ryan Ziwa | Staff Writer
I constantly think about how I’m not yet living the “best years of my life.” I Google celebrities my age at least every two weeks, as I have today, to remind myself that I could be doing so much more. If only I had embraced now as the beginning of the best years.
Before I get tempted to once again move the goalpost because of school, work, the lack of a friend group, or the time just not being “right,” I’m stretching this moment of determination by pushing myself out of my comfort zone.
I remember yearning for the college experience while in high school. The media, my teachers, and friends all depicted college as the place to find “your thing,” “your people,” and even yourself. I mentally wrote a couple of scenes that I couldn’t wait for the college experience to adapt.
With one year remaining before I toss my cap while inside the Ocean Bank Convocation Center, I’m extremely crushed by how off-script my experience has been.
Sure, there have been a few thrilling adventures and moments of character development. But nothing has lingered long enough to transform into a memory orb I can proudly carry after graduation.
I wanted to attribute my experience to the activities that color large blocks of our time at college: academics and professional development, but something else stood out as a bigger hindrance.
Conventionality hangs like a gray curtain, separating those behind and in front of it, and dulling the entire room. Such a culture celebrates popular aesthetics, comfort, oh, and more popular aesthetics at the expense of individuality and personal judgment. Eccentricity then, is assigned to a future self who is anticipated to have greater freedom (from recession and all its indicators) and stability.
We see this culture reflected in the narrow range of ways we spend our time outside of class: working out, scrolling, bingeing TV, and socializing. We also see it in our purchases and the goals we chase.
While conventionality is driven by our need, as social creatures, to feel accepted, eccentricity is imperative for wholehearted living. And the greater the amount of eccentricity in a community, the higher the amount of “genius, mental vigor, and moral courage.”
This is where the “weird class” comes in: to learn to lean into our individuality. In turn, our culture will shift to one of great diversity, more than can be contained in a college brochure (admittedly, not a high bar anymore).
This self-designed and self-instructed mental class is a conscious effort to offer something authentic to yourself and something of genuine interest. The best years of our lives aren’t after we graduate or achieve whatever other milestone exists in the future, but when we enroll in a “weird class.”
I must now conclude this piece and shift to my weird class assignment: letting go of perfectionism.
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