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THE NARRATIVE ARC | PERSONAL ESSAY
1978: The Year I Grew Up
From Shakespeare to Khomeini
One of the best things about being a college undergrad is that professors sometimes trust you with insights that help you understand that all those keg and purple Jesus parties could be for suckers. Not that I was ever opposed to such parties; but after so many drunken nights, what worlds were left to capture in off-campus houses where those who were past college age often congregated?
Most of us know when it’s time to leave college, when graduation becomes more enticing than holding on to dorm rooms and rowdy cafeteria gatherings that last several hours so that any homework could be fairly approached with reluctant enthusiasm and a good dosing of coffee.
I stayed an extra year as an undergrad because I left in the spring semester of my junior year to work in D.C. for my congressman. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but in so many ways it prepared me to trust and to be alone with myself. And maybe this, more than anything else, opened my eyes to things that most adults already took for granted or pretended couldn’t really touch their lives.
This was the post-Watergate era where everyone vaguely associated with the Nixon administration — and certainly those who reported on it — wrote tell-all books that…
