I barely remember the moment I decided I wanted to go to Boston College, especially because I resisted any mention of college until the start of senior year.  The first time my dad took me to the campus, I pouted and said thought it was a stupid detour and we should just go.  Somewhere along the line, though, it became the only place I had any feelings towards, and after a sunny tour led by one half of a set of very hot twins, I was sold.  It accepted the common application.  I submitted that, including my essay on Dumbledore, got early acceptance in December, and that was that.

The college is gorgeous, no one can doubt that.  And that was really what my entire decision was based upon.  Although I later applied for Providence College, being my dad’s alma mater, I got soaked up to my knees during my campus tour there, forever solidifying my belief that Rhode Island is the most miserably rainy state.  But a few weeks later, at BC, I gazed around at the Hogwarts of my dreams and thought, this will do just fine.

Orientation was… awkward, to say the least.  I did not click with anyone.  We spent 2.5 days socializing and I just couldn’t make a connection with anyone I met.  The girls in my temporary dorm room thought my name was so strange (they were all Asian) and the boys in my group wouldn’t let me joke with them.  Social outings involved me standing silently, or making random conversation with students that I literally never saw again.  I remember crying, calling my mom at home, and being told that it was all fake, it was no indication of what my four years would be like.

Except, it’s exactly what my first year was like.  I did not fit in with my roommate or her friends, and the few friends that I did make weren’t seen very often because I didn’t party or go out.  I did the forceful thing in some situations — joining concert band;  forming study groups;asking others if they wanted to hang out based on similar interests I knew we had, but no one would respond.  I was only comforted by the fact that I had a job and I was still smart and getting good grades.  I cried a lot, weeping especially over the fact that no one wanted to room with me the next year.

I ended up getting placed randomly, somehow scoring prime real estate on lower campus.  I got on well with my 7 new roommates at first, or at least I thought I did — when I see them today I realize what temporary connections I had really made with them.  I became slightly more social, and consistently smart.  I joined the school newspaper and wrote a lot, which made me feel good about myself.  But that only applied to my brain and capabilities — I was forever reminded how much I did not fit in with the rest of the student body.  I liked different things, dressed homely compared to the girls, attracted zero attention from the guys.  My one-liners, usually so popular, fell flat amongst people who had never seen Seinfeld.  There was a growing need to leave BC for a while; I was not sad when I moved out.

The year I spent away from Chestnut Hill was amazing, as has been chronicled in the rest of this blog.  Trinity College Dublin was both different and the same — it had its fair share of snobs, its trendsters, and its useless classes, but it also had a lot of people with substance.  And here I am obviously defining “substance” as PEOPLE WHO LIKE ME.  I had never been disliked in my entire life until I got to BC and found that I was constantly the butt of the joke for prettier girls.  It was a different environment altogether at Trinity, based on feeling like a part of a community of people rather than a community of alumni.  I never learned “For Boston” or attended football games or even set foot inside the Mods, and because of this I was completely ostracized at BC.  But at Trinity, I never watched a rugby match or attended the Trinity Ball or set foot inside the Phil’s room to hear a debate or play foosball, but nobody cared.  Nobody cared that I didn’t drink, and nobody cared when I started to drink.  I was just a well-liked person who made friends immediately and still keeps in touch with them, despite being an ocean away and speaking different languages.  At BC, I couldn’t even manage to keep in touch with girls who lived at the other end of the hall.

My final year was rough (understandably, I hope).  Obviously, I did not want to come back to the States, never mind BC.  I trucked through it, and it went better than my other two years.  My grades remained as high as ever, I lived off campus with a group of very friendly girls, and I finally got to display the mind-numbing majesty of the BC population to my skeptical boyfriend, whose ears almost bled when we sat behind a pair of girls on the T one day.  But at no time did I want to be there.  I just really, really wanted to be anywhere else.  Classes had become a formula, and I knew how to get an A.  I still didn’t want to party, despite having just spent a year traipsing around Dublin looking for pubs that would stay open later.  Suddenly, I was back to being the weird girl who even the professors didn’t want to talk to for long after class.

Graduating yesterday was therefore greatly needed.  It was the wrong college for me.  Who is it right for?  People whose families have a lot of money, whose chief interests are the following things: sports, Longchamp handbags, and Edward 40-Hands.  People whose idea of college stems from movies and are happy to perpetuate as many annoying stereotype about students as humanly possible.  Bros and bitches.  Not everyone was, of course, but in my 3 years I managed to meet very, very few who wouldn’t eventually get slotted into one of these categories.

Academically, it’s a great school.  I did very well on this front, getting only two B+’s, graduating summa cum laude, and getting into Phi Beta Kappa.  I thought the professors in the English department were outstanding, and those that I took in other departments were also great.  Because it’s liberal arts, I had to dabble in a little of everything, and I was really happy to do so — my immunology class was a favorite, and even history (usually a weak subject for me) was engaging.  I established very good relationships with my professors, who have reflected their sentiments towards me in very successful recommendations.

The administration, on the other hand, is pretty miserable.  The most important thing to BC, from my perspective, was my money.  Any way they could swindle some money out of me, they did.  I paid a full year’s tuition despite never setting foot on campus junior year and instead attending a much more prestigious — and much cheaper — university.  Even now, I’ve been getting emails for months about contributing a senior gift.  Hey, BC, howsabout giving me a year or two to see if this $200,000 education is worth its weight in the working world before you start asking for more money?  Have some self-respect, you’re starting to look a little desperate.  I don’t feel like contributing yet another useless golden eagle statue to some empty corner of campus.

It’s the right school for some people.  At a party held in my house the other night, someone explained to me why he loved this school.  ”Don’t hold it against the administration!” he said to those of us saying we’d never give money to the college again.  ”Boston College is not the administration!”

“Okay, but what is Boston College then?” I asked.  ”If it’s not them, then who does represent it?”

“Huh.  I dunno, I guess.  Well, us, right?”

You, I corrected in my head.  From the moment I set foot on campus, I was never “us.”  I could never catch onto the hoopla, the excitement that people felt when they chanted, “We are — BC!” at events.  I never did find my group of friends, and it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever communicate with anyone I met there again.  I won’t go to reunions, because I won’t be catching up with anyone.  Next time I go back, I won’t even recognize the campus, which is undergoing a 1.6-billion-dollar makeover in the next 10 years.

I’m a little disappointed that college turned out that way, and I often wonder how it would have been different if I’d gone anywhere else.  But I don’t regret going to BC, and I don’t want my parents to feel as though money was wasted.  I suppose if I hadn’t gone to BC, then I wouldn’t have gotten some of the publishing internships that I’ve had over the years.  I wouldn’t have had access to the outstanding Irish Studies department and wouldn’t have gone to Dublin for a full year.  I wouldn’t have met all the people I met in Ireland, and I wouldn’t have had a point of reference to understand just how good life was at Trinity.  I would likely be graduating directionless, heading home and returning to a summer job.  Instead, I know exactly where I’m going.  I know now who I’m not – I’m not BC.  The four years that people said would be amazing were not, but that’s okay, because they were just four years.  And since I tend to do everything opposite, I can only presume that my post-grad life will be not draining and a letdown, as it is for so many people, but fulfilling.  Lively.  Happy.

none

Cutting out unnecessary purchases has made a huge difference in my money, and I hardly had any unnecessary purchases to begin with.  My rules are pretty simple.  The steadfast ones:

• Don’t exceed weekly/monthly budgets, which goes for dining out, groceries, transportation (both train and gas), and entertainment
• If there’s a store-brand option just go with it
• If I don’t fall in love with something right away, put it down and leave the store
• Spend the last of that Amazon gift card money wisely
• Put any extra or unexpected income straight into savings

And the flexible ones that I think I’ve just been following intuitively:

• If I can get home in the next half hour and find something to eat there, don’t eat out
• Order the cheapest thing on the menu (which leads to tea in every coffee shop, pasta in every restaurant, both of which are a-okay by my stomach)
• Take help where it’s offered, and only ask for it if I’m starving
• Don’t starve, no matter what the budget says

But even as someone whose material consumption is low for her demographic, sometimes, I really want something, and I can’t have it.  There are days where I can walk into a supermarket and walk by every single treat to head straight for the wheat bread, and then there are days where I stare resentfully at my precious quarters which I want to use on a Snickers bar but must save for laundry.  There are days where my face is very dry and broken out and needs good, proper exfoliation to look anyway presentable, but that’s a lot of money and it’s not going to happen.  Heck, I went through all of last year cutting my own hair with sewing scissors and a bathroom mirror, and practically cried with joy when my mom got me a salon gift card for this past Christmas.

Especially at my university, which is full of (mostly) well-dressed and pretty girls.  Even though I’m not trying to attract anyone’s attention, still: I spent all of last year feeling great about myself and the way I looked, and now I feel eyes skip right over me while I walk to class.  Sometimes that’s just fine — ya’ll know I hate BC social life — but sometimes it just pools into an overall sense of shabbiness, of being a cheapskate, of failing where other people aren’t.

There are just these little luxuries I’m extremely aware of now.  Not that that’s made me anymore worldly or appreciative of what I have in any kind of way.  Let’s not kid ourselves — I still want these things and think I deserve them.  But while the dress may look pretty and my ears could do with re-piercing, I can’t have it, and so I’ve got to suck it up.  Kick my heels into the ground, tug at my hair, and sulk at my lack of social options — do whatever I need to to make the jealous and covetous feeling pass — but I can’t.  Can’t, can’t, can’t.

And then hope that after a while, I won’t mind so much anymore.

none

I went on a girl date.

Not just any girl date, but a blind girl date.  So blind, in fact, that I don’t think the other girl knew it was a girl date.  But for me, it was a chance to make a connection with another girl, to establish a friendship in a new environment, so that when I arrive in Ireland I won’t be totally alone, friend-wise.

My boyfriend, orchestrator of the date and thus the modern day equivalent of the very attractive Rashida Jones, teased me mercilessly before and after.  Was I nervous?  What would we talk about?  He escorted me there, made small talk, and then very cleverly excused himself to go back to work.  It went pretty well, but she played it cool.  When I met my boyfriend again later, he asked how long I was going to wait to friend her?  Would I write on her wall, or send or a message, or just not?  What did we talk about?  Were there sparks?  Did she like me?  Did I like her?  Do I think we’ll connect again when I get back to Ireland?*

I said later, “You know, scenarios like this are why all my friends used to think I was actually gay!”

What happened to making friends?  It used to be so easy.  High school was, in looking back, awesome: hanging out with your friends all day, doing minimal work, and talking back to teachers who didn’t really mind.  There was no real pressure to bond with anyone, you just did because they were there, all day every day.

I haven’t made a real friend since then.  College was a total wash in that regard — it was impossible for me to connect with many people at BC, and I drifted from the few that I liked.  Those that I made at Trinity are either gone to their respective home countries or hate me because I’m beautiful (read: dating someone beautiful).  Even now that I’m back home, I see my best friends once a month, if that.  I’m not forced into anyone’s company for very long, so nothing lasts.

I know most of that’s my own fault.  I’m a recluse, and I don’t enjoy going out in America, and so when I’m invited places I just decline and go back to playing with my stuffed animals.  But I’m not talking about at night.  I mean, don’t most people have those friends they can call up to go to lunch?  That they can jump into conversations with without having to first ask everything polite, because they talk so much that they already know what they’re up to?  That have long phone calls for no reason and throw birthday parties for each other?

I don’t know what I’m talking about, I never made a friend-friend at BC so I don’t know how we girls are supposed to interact at this age.  The last all-girl several-hour get-together I had involved pasta salad, boxes of chocolate, and Love Actually, and that was Christmas 2008.  All I know is, college is over in a few months, and for the rest of my life I will be desperately reaching for connectible points in every female interaction I have.  Topics of conversation I’ve got in my repertoire: menstruation, Taylor Swift, commitment, Ellen DeGeneres, going to bed early.  Any other girly talking points I should brush up on?

*She friended me back!

3 com

No, nostalgia is definitely not what I got.  Not nostalgia for Ireland, anyway.  I got some old and some new instead.  Went to some new restaurants — went to some old pubs — saw some new castles — saw some old faces — scoped out some apartment developments — waved to my old house at Beechwood — saw London for the first time — couldn’t wait to get back to Dublin after — saw an inch of snow shut down two of Europe’s most prominent cities — saw Irish kids building an army of snowmen like never happens here anymore — spent an inordinate amount of time in the airport — spent even longer snuggled up inside.

It was a really great trip all around, something I needed badly.  First semester was a rough time.  Nothing in particular was rough about it — nobody died, lost their job, or broke up — but personally, I never seemed to get on my own two feet for very long before something would trip me again.  By the time December 29th hit and I boarded my flight, all I could think was, FINALLY!!!

The three weeks flew by, as I knew they would, but approaching the end wasn’t as DREADFUL, ABSOLUTELY DREADFUL as it was the last time I left Ireland, or the consequent times that my boyfriend left Boston.  After sitting around most weekdays while my boyfriend went to work, I grew pretty restless and ready to jump back into my own work.  I sobbed like a baby in the airport for a few minutes, and then I composed myself and felt okay.  It was maybe the fastest recovery time I’ve had since leaving him.

Now, for the next three weeks, I’m just going to do homework and make bank.  This semester is the beginning of the end, but let’s be honest: College was never what was important to me.  So really — and more importantly — this is just the calm before the next beginning.

none

First semester of senior year is long gone, Christmas is past, and now in a few days I’ll return to Dublin for a good long winter break.

Some of my friends have already been back and said it wasn’t very nostalgic — too soon, perhaps, to really mean anything yet.  I don’t know if I’m looking for nostalgia.  It’s not like going back to high school and saying, “Oh, remember sitting here at lunch?  And you sat there, and she sat there, and I always ate a peanut butter sandwich and Yoo-hoo.”  I won’t be saying, “Aw, I loved coming here.”  It’ll be, “I love coming here.  Is there anywhere else we can go?”

Friends said crossing the Liffey and cutting through Trinity didn’t feel like memory lane, just another day in Dublin.  This disappointed them, but it’s what I want.  I want the next few weeks to be like I never left.  And before I left, I was just living — not thinking about what I would think of things later, but just doing things.  I want to constantly recreate what the city means to me, just like any other day.  I want to hit the old haunts at some point, soak in the familiarity of going down the street for a pint just because, dancing to indie and ironic music at Doyle’s, and dozing off in a Luas seat, but I also want to check out restaurants I haven’t noticed before, explore the outlying districts, and find Iveagh Gardens once and for all.  I’ve spent the last semester staring at my ceiling thinking of everything that happened last year.  It’s high time to paper over old memories with new ones.

It’s a city I know very well, with lots of corners I don’t know at all.  Sorry, Boston, but you’re a city I’ll never know.  You and I are long-standing acquaintances who will never quite get each other.  I can’t learn you, your infrastructure, or the things that matter to you, and you’ll never try with me.  This other place that I’m heading back to, this little city that quietly builds and builds, is calling me back.  It was a pit stop for many, and while it may not be where I’ll forever rest my head, for now it’s where I’ll keep on living.

And in the summer, when I’m through with college and stepping into the first day of the rest of my life, it’s where I’ll go.

one

About a month ago I quit my English senior honors thesis.  I’m not sure where I got the idea that I had to do one, because it is entirely optional and only a handful of English students take it on, but I suppose since high school I’ve done a lot of things I never had to do.  I never had to take all those AP classes, or all those instruments, or all those internships early on–I’m pretty sure I was enough without them.  But they were there, and I could, so I did.

Going back through the Pretty Big Wheel archives, I see now why I decided to do the senior thesis:

So as to not totally close the doors on this, I need to set my sights on a senior thesis. And for ideas I have approximately… hmm, two and two is four… carry the one… oh, NOTHING.

(I’ve really only included the second sentence because I love realizing that I was funny once upon a time.  I crack me up.)  The pressure of graduate school is big, and I’m still battling with people who seem to think that I should be going when I’m fairly certain that I do not want or need to go.  If you’re going to be a doctor or a teacher, yeah, you should really go, there’s a lot of textbook learning and exams and special degrees and specialization involved.  And you’re also going to be pretty lucky because when it comes to gaining beginner experience, you’ll get clinical and classroom placements.  With publishing, not so.  No publisher would give a shit if I said, “True, I don’t have 2+ years of editorial experience, but! I know the history of Harper’s Magazine.” I’d get met with a big fat, “Who the hell cares?  Do you know what you’re doing when we sit you down with some copy or not?”

I just have to get into it.  It’s extremely tempting to put it off another year or so, and actually it would solve my immigration issue so fast because students are the luckiest people in the world.  But I would accrue more debt than ever and be nowhere closer to the top of the publishing food chain.  It’s a business where you just have to prove yourself, and I should stop getting so clammy about the fact and just get into it already.

All this to say, the honors thesis was a joke of an idea.  While other students were already beginning their research last spring, I was in another country, sort of toying with the idea of this one author, Flann O’Brien.  I’d enjoyed An Béal Bocht and thought I could like his other work too.  Oh, ho-ho.  Who knew this guy was an existentialist/post-colonialist/absurdist/meta-fictionalist master?  And everything else in between?  At Swim-Two-Birds took me ages to get through, because it is a book about a narrator writing a book about a character writing a book in which his characters can write back at the author.  I’d start that sentence again from the top, if I were you.  By the time I’d finished The Third Policeman (easier to digest, harder to discuss), my thesis proposal was due.

Oh, right, the thesis part.  The part where I explain very clearly which critical approach I am going to take with this author, and what threads I will use to tie his works together.  Let me just refer back to my notes from last year and the year before where I wrote down all the different types of literary theory and OH WAIT.  THAT’S RIGHT, I DECIDED ABOUT TWO WEEKS BEFORE TO RANSACK MY ROOM AND TOSS OUT EVERY SINGLE NOTE I’VE EVER TAKEN, BECAUSE COLLEGE IS ALMOST OVER, WHO NEEDS THIS NONSENSE ANYMORE?

So with that, I was off to an excellent start, one which made my advisor look at me with a withering gaze that said, You’re shitting me, right? He put it slightly nicer: “You have a very long way to go and I don’t know if you can do it.”  There’s that inspiration I was looking for!

I struggled throughout September, well aware that I had two months to write 30-something coherent pages on a topic I’d yet to narrow down, about an author who notoriously resists the application of all literary theory because THAT IS HIS POINT.  My other classes were not off to a good start either, with C’s and B’s on my first few assignments and quizzes.  I simply had no time for them, with 15-20 pages of thesis rumination due every Thursday.  And that’s all it was–rumination.  There was nothing solid about anything I was writing, nothing that made me go, ah, I’ve figured it out, I know what I’m discussing now! I got more and more confused, more and more frustrated.

I called my mom one night in early October bawling about how much work I had to do and how stupid it was to be doing it, how my professor thought I was stupid, how I thought I was stupid, how my whole stupid paper was stupid and pointless and optional and yet I was killing myself over it.  ”Why don’t you just quit?” she said.  ”That’s what I would do.”

Pardon me, madam, but Molly Griffin does not quit her academics.  She may have shimmied her way out of basketball, and at some point while you were blinking she managed to not play the saxophone in the last two years, but her academics?  How dare you.

Really, that’s how indignant I got, all huffing and puffing about how I would never do that, can’t just quit, that’s just embarrassing.  My mom said, “Well I think you should.  And we’ll dance in the kitchen on Saturday.”  After we hung up, I sprawled on my bed and moaned and wept like I was deciding which child of mine I had to kill.  Then I wrote a quick letter to my advisor and emailed it.  This is the start of his priceless response:

Hello, Molly.

this has been a very busy day and i haven’t had a moment to look at your paper. indeed, as 31 papers are about to descend tomorrow upon me, our meeting on Friday looks uncertain.

to be honest, i have doubts about your preparation and progress at this stage.

I knew that’s what I’d hear, as he’d expressed doubt the entire way through (on top of never having read my thesis to begin with).  I can’t blame him: he was very busy and it was terrible work.  He’d never laughed or smiled once in my meetings with him, although he’s a laughing man, which suggested that he absolutely hated being involved with my thesis, which was bound to reflect poorly on him as well.  When I told him in person I really was not going to go ahead with it, he said, “To be honest, I still haven’t read it.”  I said, “Oh, don’t worry, it isn’t any good anyway,” and he let out a big HA!!  Then practically skipped away with joy of one less stupid thing off his shoulders.

This is all very long and perhaps more melodramatic than it sounds like it was, but I was wrecked that week.  How could I just quit like that?  I’ve never dropped anything before like this.  Every resource or contact I’d used for the thesis seemed very, very disappointed that I was not continuing, like it was a personal affront to ACADEMIA.

But what can I say: I don’t really care about academics anymore.  I’m going to end up with evidence of this withdrawal on my transcript, a great big W, something I really argued to avoid but accepted in the end.  So what?  I’ve been really, really good at academics all my life, and it’s what has defined me especially in these later years.  But I’m not going to be in school forever.  I could hang in there for another year or two and hide from adulthood a little bit longer (and I’m still not totally sure that I won’t make a last minute decision to get my masters if things get too hard).  But I’d really be a lot prouder of myself if I held my breath and threw myself into the job force, excelled, and carved out a new identity somewhere else.

one