Inever seem to bring enough clothes hangers to school with me.
It is becoming a reoccurring theme, as if some wizardry prevents me from ever being able to hang all my shirts in one place, where I can color code them based on various elements of style and season like the self-diagnosed organizational freak that I am.
This is an essentially pointless fact that I will not revisit in this column, but I wanted to present a part of my identity. A small part, but a part nonetheless.
Homecoming queen, perfectionist, neat-freak, hipster — there are an infinite number of titles and adjectives that we can place like stickers all over our bodies. In many ways, we are like little Russell from the movie “Up,” touting around our sashes and badges that represent who we are and what we’ve accomplished.
But if you’ve seen the movie (it’s been out since 2009 and has a sky-high 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, so if you haven’t seen it, you should get on that), you know that the movie isn’t really about Russell earning that final badge. That is the surface-level interpretation, sure. But when you dig a little deeper, you realize the movie is entirely about discovering identity — Carl’s identity apart from Ellie, Russell’s identity apart from his broken family, Kevin’s identity apart from her lost children and Dug’s identity apart from his pack of “friends.”
One of the toughest challenges a student faces in college is not the intensity of club week; it is not the realization that college is work and time is a letter grade; it is not even the aftereffects of eating Taco Bell three times a day. Rather, the toughest challenge a student faces in college is an estranged sense of identity, apart from everything they have ever known. And when I say “they,” I mean “we.” In many ways, I am still in that precarious boat, drifting aimlessly down the river between the library and the student center. (Seriously, when are we going to fix the standing water problem on campus?)
Maybe this identity crisis stems from the shattering realization that college is a big world, with eyes watching our every move. When I was a freshman, I wanted every day to be a new page in my book, and consequently a new presentation of myself. I had a closet full of masks and a head full of self-doubt.
I have a feeling I wasn’t the only one.
C.S. Lewis says in “Mere Christianity” that, “you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.” Looking back, I wish I had kept a firmer grasp on my pre-college identity, because my college identity is now an encrypted mess of failed attempts at emo, punk, rebel and ghost buster (I spent the night in the haunted Lee Building, remind me to tell you the story sometime).
But in hindsight, while I may have been more confident before relocating to Harding, I have no regrets. Because like Carl, Russell, Kevin and Dug, I am on a journey of identity. I am discovering who I am apart from the safety of my hometown, apart from the comfort of 18 years of continuity. Like Russell, I am earning that irreplaceable grape soda bottle cap, which means nothing to the rest of the world — but to Carl and Russell, it is a mark of identity, earned after a defining adventure.
College is that defining adventure for us. We will earn our medals and trinkets, yes, but we will also earn our bottle cap, and the bottle cap represents something greater; something that nobody else will ever understand. Emo, punk, rebel, ghost buster — these are the badges I’ve awarded myself in the last three years.
My bottle cap, however, is still forthcoming.
