First the Darkness, Then the Light: On Becoming a Student

When I think back to my days at university I realize now at my age (48) how quick everything happened. I was changing from year to year, but when I used to think back to those times, only a few years after they had happened, in fact, only a decade after them, I thought of everything happening at a much slower, more excruciating speed.

After my first year in a dormitory at SDSU I moved out to live in an apartment in SE San Diego. Immediately I was bored. Life in the dorms had always been eventful. It seemed like every week, if not every day, there was something going on there. There was a schedule, a routine, peppered with fun and exciting events happening all around me. Towards the end of my stay there things were beginning to slow down, sure, but I wasn’t prepared for the slow, “emptiness” of living with a roommate, driving to school, and having to plan my life, daily needs, and entertainment.

Instead of going to dances or parties on Friday and Saturday nights, I found myself at home on the couch worrying how I was going to meet my next girlfriend. Maybe watching the LA Kings lose. Maybe doing a bit of light reading, “studying”.

I remember the highlight of those days being walking with my roommate along University Ave. at the midnight hour to Roberto’s for chicken burritos. Before then, when I think about it, I wonder if I had ever had a chicken burrito. I remember how juicy they were at Roberto’s, and I could really taste large pieces of chicken and what I think now were pieces of boiled green peppers, skin-like in texture, in the softness of the tortilla.

Even though I enjoyed those walks under the brightness of the city street lamps, I always did them with an eye towards the darkness of the night just beyond them. I knew, I think, I wanted something more than Friday nights at Roberto’s, but, what, that I didn’t know.

The following semester I made the decision to join a fraternity, something I never thought I would do a year before. Living in the dorms, fraternities seemed extraordinary and superfluous, a lifestyle for bored rich kids, a lifestyle which harkened back to the lifestyle of my high school classmates in Calabasas. One which I had abhorred and belittled.

To be continued…