Quiet desperation

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”\nHenry David Thoreau wrote that in “Walden.” Thoreau went to Harvard, but back then college was a lot different than it is now. He could have fooled me. \nAfter a year of college, I would say that the mass of men and women here are definitely leading lives of quiet desperation. Some aren’t even keeping the desperation quiet.\nThis is probably the most critical part of our lives: young adulthood. The big dreams we’ve had since childhood are beginning to come to fruition, to take a real form and shape, as we hit (or continue to try to plow through) the wall of responsibility that is college and choose the majors that will likely end up determining what we do for the rest of our lives. \nIt’s the end of an era in our lives, really. It’s the last bastion of youth. After we leave, we’re officially real people.\nThis all adds up to a lot of stress and even more fear.\nGrades seem to be literally life or death sometimes – because if you don’t get good grades, how will you ever get into a good medical school, or a good law school? And God forbid that should happen or we’ll all end up living in cardboard boxes.\nThe people who have gotten that far are lucky, though, in the eyes of the throngs who still have no idea what they want to do in life. Take me, for example: newspaper writer? Lawyer? Vagrant? Only time will tell – but time is running out, because if we all don’t decide soon, we won’t have the internships or tests needed to accomplish anything ... and in that case, it’s back to the Wendy’s drive-thru.\nSo we basically all spend every week slowly losing our minds because of all of the work and pressure – then when Thursday, Friday and Saturday come around (Sunday too, for the true pros), the campus gets collectively trashed. This seems like a good idea at first – blowing off steam, I guess – but considering the homework that doesn’t get done, the sleep that is lost, and the utter massacre of brain cells, it really just makes everything worse.\nOur lives are a maelstrom of societal pressure and self-destruction, and many of us are only just keeping a tenuous hold on ourselves, only just keeping ourselves from being destroyed.\nGrim, right? It’s the truth, so get used to it. There is still hope, though. We don’t have to live like this. No matter how hard the world may try to break us down, we can fight it. Every person has a part to be played in the world – it’s only a matter of finding it. The desperation we feel doesn’t need to reduce us to nothing. It’s just a matter of not allowing the fear to win. It’s a matter of not allowing the pressure to be an excuse to self destruct. And believing in yourself. We all can – and will – succeed.\nAnd just think – if your GPA ever gets too low, you can always just run for president.