Before I left my house this morning, I gingerly slipped through a maze of dirty clothes and discarded textbooks to get to my coffee pot. I frantically drank my coffee before I could remember what class for which I drug myself out of bed. And once I had flooded my engine with caffeine, it occurred to me that I reached this sad, chaotic state of affairs after only one week of classes.
So this is senior year.
I always imagined that I would have my act together by now. After three years at Hillsdale College, I thought I would be calm and cool and organized, on top of all my homework, with a life as pretty as a Pinterest board.
But the truth is that Pinterest doesn’t inspire me to put together artistic, sophisticated, florally perfect outfits. In fact, I’m lucky if it inspires me to walk out the door wearing something other than pajamas. Whatever idealistic picture of “senior-ness” I painted in my head as a freshman exploded into visions of soiled mugs, unanswered emails, and sprawling to-do lists. In that sense, not much has changed since freshman year.
But something is different this time around. I may not feel efficient or professional, I may not feel anything slightly resembling adulthood, but I do feel comfortable. It turns out there is joy to be found in the messiness of everyday life. It’s like a kid baking cookies: you can tell how much he’s enjoying himself based on how much chocolate and flour is smeared across his face. Indeed, during my few years here I’ve found that the mess is the surest sign of life.
Of course some people have all of their papers sorted into neat, color-coded, alphabetized folders and their homework finished by 10 p.m. every night. Good for them. I wish them all of my happiness and more. They will be calmer and healthier come finals week, I’m sure. Yet I have a sneaking suspicion that those of us who are familiar with the 2 a.m. McDonalds run have a deeper glint in our eyes and a friendlier story on our lips. You may not believe me now, freshmen, but I’m pretty sure there are more important things to learn from Hillsdale than academics. Sure, I love reading Shakespeare. But I think even the Bard himself would want me to take his ideas and try to live them. And that’s always a messy business.
Not all that long ago I managed to spill a fairly significant percentage of dirty chai onto an important term paper by tripping and landing on my face on my way up the stairs of Lane Hall to turn it in. I didn’t have time to print off another copy, so that professor got to see a genuine portrait of my procrastination and exhaustion written in coffee smudges across that paper.
Those stapled sheets didn’t just communicate the sterile content of my thoughts on Katherine Anne Porter. It told a story- a human one of clumsiness and error. It accidently communicated a fuller picture of who I am.
Now don’t get me wrong—I’m not suggesting you go smearing your midnight snack across the pages of your next Western Heritage paper. It’s important that we uphold professional academic standards, Hillsdale’s values, and so on. But as a human being, I have found infinite stores of joy and peace in sharing my coffee-stained, messy life with other people.
Maybe it’s just me, but I am incapable of pretending that my life is a Pinterest board for very long. Sooner or later the dirty socks are going to escape from my overstuffed drawer. It’s a lot less tiring never to try to hide them in the first place.
If that kind of perspective is all I take from my last year at Hillsdale, then I think I’ll be able to graduate with all the honors I need.
