Exams and Existential Crises

Sometimes, when I’m in Ann Arbor, I walk to Main Street, just so I can see people over the age of 25. Then I imagine I’m somewhere else.

I wish I could say that I love college. I really do. And my dislike of the environment isn’t that I haven’t learned so much about others and myself in my three years here. It isn’t that I haven’t been inspired by certain instructors. I think it’s mostly that I feel an overwhelming sense of exhaustion that comes with living in this bubble of a college town. I feel like the sleepless nights I’ve spent writing and studying have made me age at least 40 years. I feel like institutions of any variety naturally suppress creativity.

For instance, a few days ago, I handed in an essay about the pedestal in this poem.

Please let that sink in.

I spent hours upon hours of my life writing about a pedestal.

One of my greatest fears is that we each have a quota of creativity — a set number of words or ideas in our minds of which we can possibly run out. In fact, in a class this term, we learned about Joseph Mitchell, the reporter for The New Yorker who wrote Joe Gould’s Secret. We learned that that was the last significant work he produced. After its publication, he would go to his office, shut the door, and go home at the end of the day. His coworkers have stated that they barely heard typing and that he never yielded much else. I wonder if he was happy at the end of his life, because the way by which people have described him in his later years makes me terrified. They say he was detached. They note that he would nod at people in the hallways and keep walking and sigh and cut himself off from others. I am so scared of becoming a ghost that haunts the Earth while my heart is still beating.

And this semester has amplified my fear . . .

For a month, I had been researching and writing on the refugee shelter, Freedom House, in Detroit. Residents who were seeking asylum here in the U.S. trusted me with their stories in interviews and I viewed it as my responsibility to portray them accurately in my final piece. After pouring so much time and energy into this project, I moved on to my pedestal essay and simply could not bring myself to care about it. Like Mitchell, I was detached. I ignored phone calls and text messages and stared at my Word document, thinking that I just didn’t have it in me to string sentences together. I would walk to class and nod to acquaintances on the sidewalk and sigh and keep walking.

After spending so much time listening to both optimistic and heartbreaking stories from the residents at Freedom House, all of my other class work seemed so utterly meaningless. I wanted to print my pedestal essay and burn it out of rage. I often found myself wondering — what am I even doing here? In my walks down Main Street, I wanted to just keep going until I passed the city limits and left all of my problems behind me.

One day, after having one of these walking existential crises, I became particularly annoyed when a professor with the most uncaring attitude and a monotone voice to match literally called himself “an intellectual” in class. Now, he may very well be that, but to grant yourself such an title . . . God. I realized that I cannot stand professors who take their job name so literally — i.e. they feel that the only responsibility they have is to profess. It’s as if they are those people who shout that we’re all going to Hell on the Diag — thinking they’re helping the world by pointing out how wrong it is. To be a professor, you need to prove that what you’re professing matters. You need to teach. You need to inspire your students to give a damn. You need to realize that your Ph.D. does not make you invincible. I’ve spoken to so many refugees with advanced degrees in their home countries over the past year. They are struggling with the fact that they will need to essentially start their college education over in America. However, as I listen, what strikes me most in their voices is an unwavering sense of hope that gaining another degree will absolutely be possible. And after hours of staring at my horrible poem analysis, I started thinking of these people and truly understanding how inspiring they are. Because if they’re willing to spend years writing pedestal essays again, I shouldn’t be struggling to finish mine once.

I will graduate from this university eventually and I’m looking forward to it. I’m excited for the day when I can gaze at my elaborately scripted name on the diploma I’ve lost so much sleep and money for. But I don’t expect to feel some sort of magical transformation upon holding that paper in my hands. In my interview with Freedom House’s Case Manager and former resident, Lucy Neighbor, she explained how she helps asylum seekers when they are doubting their abilities to begin again in the U.S. “It’s not a degree that defines you,” she tells them. “It’s what’s in your heart.”