Author and Columnist
I started at DCC on a full scholarship for two years as a Communications major. I very well may change that after this semester, depending as to whether or not I can transfer my classes to New Paltz at the end of the two years.
I still have no idea why you wanted to be a Communications major. Sure, you like cameras and visual storytelling, but you were under no illusions that you would be the next Kevin Smith. Did you want to make movies? Who convinced you to become a Communications major and why? A woman at a ritual the summer before you started told you that being a Communications major at DCC was a mistake. That bothered you, but you felt there was nothing you could do at that point.
Was he trying to winnow down the department or was he dictatorial by his nature? Either way, the late nights, how entitled the program felt to the students' time outside legitimate work, the cultish devotion of the few ass-kissers certain that a community college Communications department was congruent to studying under Bunuel, assured that you were looking for your exit. I may regret some of what you have done and will do but signing up for a new major was never among these regrets.
You will drop this major after the head of the department--who was not your professor--locked you in a broken editing booth for seven hours, unable to print the bad movie you had made about a goat, swearing that he would fail you if you couldn't manage it. I don't know why he did this. He had to understand that a broken booth was not your fault, but he tormented you. Jenny, your actual professor, rescued you. She informed you that you already had an A. The only point of printing your movie was to be in a student film festival.
You sat the festival out, so traumatized by having a small, Spanish-speaking man berate you for hours. I doubt you missed much.
Now, everything that closet full of failing equipment does fits in a phone the size of a pack of cards. It's a funny world.
That night was the certain end to your tenure as a Communications major. You became Liberal Arts Humanities so that you could graduate on time and you were not sorry for it.
I might be getting a job at The Three Arts books by Vassar. Which isn't to say I will be quitting the Mid Hudson Children's Museum (especially since everyone but me was fired and I got UNDERLINGS!), but working there a lot less.
Everyone was fired but you? Two of your older (but still college-aged) coworkers enjoyed long lunches and shopping trips when there was no one to supervise them. A new manager came in and was awful to you, so it would not be a great shock to hear that she went on a firing spree and replaced them with unpaid labor.
A few years later, you will almost but not quite date one of your underlings. We will get there.
You didn't get a job at The Three Arts. I'm not sure why you thought you would or even why you would want to. Your domain was libraries, not retail.
One of the issues I have with you--and I do have a few--is that you declined the opportunity for a great lot of formative pain in college. You stuck with Kate for the first year and a half, vaguely dated without more consequences than some unwise kisses (see: underling), and then attached yourself to a new woman. You did not allow yourself to have one-night stands that would have broken your heart. You did not have the confidence to break up with people who were wrong for you. You did not ache, really, and discover on the other side that you were only better for it. You blame in small proportion not living on campus or in town, but that is only a part of it. You never experienced people then and, now, it is much too late for that. You never let yourself be cuddled in the arms of a Tori Amos type, who are legion in college, expecting it would happen if you floated through your days. (I can think of one, Nikki, whom would have slept with you in a heartbeat but you knew you wouldn't want a commitment with her.) There was potential for adventure and misadventure, but you took the safe path and didn't hurt much for it, so you didn't grow from it.
You didn't allow yourself to be many people's mistake, and you likely would have been. In your book Danse Macabre, you talk about Roselyn smoothing her edges by rubbing up against rough boys. You remained, in some ways, jagged and unfinished until you took the chisel to yourself, unsatisfied there had not been others to give you a hand.
Please note that I am not romanticizing this. At twenty, you didn't need to be finding a wife. You needed to have your heart broken and filled again. You needed to have fights and stress so you would better know how to handle it. It wasn't going to be this field of poppies. It was going to hurt you and you should have let it.
I don't mean to suggest that your life was bereft of exultation and agony. You had your moments and I am eager to revisit them. I only know that you limited yourself. To this day, I envy people who were more liberal and trusting that the world would provide all the needed. They are more settled people now, surer of the rough road that brought them to this moment. In a sense, a rockier path might have made you yearn less to write a world where things were exciting.
I am aware that giving you, Younger Thomm, this advice does you no good. The seeds you sowed are the trees that surround me now, guardians on this path walling me from others. Maybe some young man of your ilk will find this and reconsider his balance between safety and liberty. Otherwise, I will write this, like so much else, for the entertainment of my negligible audience and my cathartic graphomania.