Parable

Time Well Spent

In college I worked two jobs during the term and three during the summer to make sure I graduated with as little debt as possible.

Most other students partied on the weekends, or relaxed. I worked. And got sick. I was sick a lot, so I spent a lot of time in bed. It’s different than napping, because you feel just as guilty afterwards but only half as rested.

 I didn’t have time to make many friends, and the best memories I have involve purchasing a long craved after food product at ten o clock at night at the big grocery store down the road. You have no idea the amount of joy a bag a nacho cheese Doritos can bring after you’ve spent seven sweaty hours dreaming of them at a cash register in the basement cafeteria of a tall office building. Nothing felt more right than wiping my orange fingers on my work-stained pants, knowing the mark would blend right in with tomorrow’s mess on these pants that used to be my favorite before I accidentally spilled scrambled eggs on them last month.

The friends I kept back home were busy too, but we’d talk over the internet, sometimes arranging for visits when I was back in town. They always asked me how I was and I said I was great, working hard. I invited someone to my apartment one day and I showed them the place above my desk where my degree would go, on the wall.   

When I graduated early after working through 9 straight quarters, all of my friends were off seeing the world, and doing other twenty-something like adventures. I was only twenty, and I had loans now. I set goals to pay them off within two years of graduation and found a job and a half to keep me busy

while I waited for everyone else to get back from having their fun, I watched their pictures on facebook. Sometimes I would cry to myself, hot with jealousy and so angry at the world for their good fortune. The good fortune of having fun. But then I would drown my sorrows in my favorite frozen pint, and things weren’t so bad again.  

I watched a lot of youtube. I mean, doesn’t everyone? I followed vloggers and beauty gurus and the news pages too. Mostly BBC sources. I liked the accents. I mean, I’m a college educated person; an adult with a preference towards news casters with an accent. I’m not a teenager anymore, I mean, I have a degree, look, it’s there on the wall.

And everyone on facebook had posts and posts and posts about the friends they made and the fun they had and the memories they enjoyed and the lessons they learned and the things they’ll never forget about being eighteen and nineteen and twenty and twenty one and twenty two and twenty three because most of them had so much fun they stayed an extra year to finish up.

#timewellspent

But my time was well spent too. Because, look, I have a degree, it’s there on the wall.