Into pieces

I've been keeping tiny scraps of my college career. I wish I had started sooner. Party invitations, silly valentines, hate-grams, love notes, commented essays from professors, letters from Iraq, fliers for various events, cards from the deans or the president inviting me to dinner, articles from the newspaper, cutouts from the literary magazines. Anything to remind me that yes i did infact come a long way, and yes, i did infact experience a college experience, however strange and atypical. Looking back, I wish I hadn't taken myself so seriously, knowing now that no one outside the college bubble is going to know the difference between an A or a B on this next lab report. No one is going to care that I still have to look up proper APA style before writing my reference section, and no one is going to care that I switched my classes/lab groups/major/thesis topic at least 3 times before deciding on one that I'm still not sure I want to do. Sometimes I feel like my college experience is simply an extention of my high school experience, a series of hard times and awkward moments, strung together by common thread of knowing that someday we'd all fondly look back on our mistakes and laugh. It's a time to learn about a subject you're passionate about, but more importantly, it's a time to learn about how you react to being passionate about something. Just like high school, sometimes I wonder if college is simply a time to stress ourselves out, to panic over silly things, be they social drama or academic drama, to spread ourselves too thinly, or not enough. Maybe it's just another hoop we have to jump through, just like everything else, just to see how high and how far we can jump, how much we can push ourselves before we crack.
I watch those movies now, those hollywood movies about how college is supposed to be. How it's supposed to be this ongoing party, a balance between self-realization, hedonistic tendencies, social catastrophe, academic pressure and how we all somehow come out perfectly aware, being able to finally turn back around to that panel, or committee or single person who is judging us, who though seemingly doubted us the whole time was just in fact testing us, and stand up for what we truly believe in. And I wonder when this moment of clarity is supposed to occur. When is it my turn to truly stick it to the man, to infact become the man, and realize that it was all just a big test of my will to reach my potential?
I feel like I'm piecing my college career together in a folder, these tiny scraps of memories, of things I don't even particularly care about but that I know, one day, I will look at with longing and smile sadly about the way I didn't even know how good I had it.
A familiar sentiment envelops me as I put these pieces together: It's the fear of forgetting that is more painful than the forgetting itself.