Time to save the world

My life has certainly been hectic lately. It seems crazy to think that eight months ago I had no greater care in the world than being with Kimberly for one more week and wondering what Seton Hall would be all about. Now, due to a variety of circumstances that have occurred in, quite literally, the last five or six days, I don't know where I'm going to be spending my summer, what I'm going to be doing with my summer, who I'm going to be living with next year, where I'll be living next year, where all of my stuff is going to be stored this summer, and a number of other seemingly vital things that I should have figured out by now with my exodus from the dorms being necessary as of May 8. As Bailey Warren, a Central student who is considering going to Seton Hall next year, put it to her mom when I told her and her mother about my predicament, "See mom? That's how you do it; you just kinda wing it." Part of me is really excited for this opportunity to "wing it" but part of me is shouting, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, that this is all a terrible, terrible idea.

My relationship with growing up has been tedious at times. College has never felt like home like I feel some of you reading this blog have experienced. While I've never seriously considered transferring for financial reasons (and that'd be admitting failure, and freshman year sucks anyway, and blah blah blah), a number of times I've thought to myself "What on earth am I doing in New Jersey?" Of course, had I gone to Truman State instead of here, I would probably often find myself wondering what on earth I was doing in Kirksville a lot too, so I'm not entirely sure this is necessarily a total negative.

On the positive side, the opportunity that has been presented to me (or at least, has the potential to be presented to me) is quite simply amazing. Ashley Williams, a junior (senior by credits, I think) who's become a relatively close acquaintance of mine in Public International Law (or at least, as close as one can get to an acquaintance), is currently interning at a law firm in Newark that, among other things, works with victims of the Darfur genocide in hopes that one day, whenever/if-ever Sudan's president is arrested by the International Criminal Court, people she has spoken with will have the opportunity to testify in The Hague, in the Netherlands. In a couple of weeks she'll literally be sitting across the desk from black Sudanese people missing limbs because of the armed militias that have murdered hundreds of thousands of people and saying "tell me what happened" and waiting for their response to be translated to English from Arabic. There are other parts to the job in addition to conducting interviews, of course, but, as my father and I have discussed many times, these aren't the sort of opportunities one gets in Missouri. Ashley claimed she'd really been talking me up with their hiring manager and they were really looking for interns over the summer, so if I was going to be around I should apply. Since this seems better for my eventual career than working at Andy's or Go Games for four months, I submitted my resume Friday and have been almost constantly on the lookout for a response. If I do end up getting one of the interning positions, which Ashley has assured me is all but certain, I have about 14 days to find a place to sublet over the summer, store my stuff, figure out with whom/where I'll be living next year (it probably won't be on campus due to the cost of me spending money instead of making it over the summer) and worry about things that I've never really had to worry about before (How do I cook this? Where does one get a good couch? Which subway line is that again?). Instead of seeing my parents and little brother (who I learned today got a 30 on his ACT as a sophomore- go David!) after 8 weeks, it'll be more like 4-6 months. While moving to New Jersey for college was definitely a break from the past, before now I've still felt inextricably tied back to home because of my lack of a permanent (semi-permanent) place to live out here. I'm away at college, but I live in Missouri. After this move, if everything works out and I get the position, I feel like this is finally, almost-completely, jumping off the cliff.

I guess this had to happen eventually. Talking to people about internships, asking all of my older friends here if they know anybody looking for an apartment roommate, and doing dry cleaning because I might actually have to wear a suit for a reason other than a debate tournament (among other things) makes me feel terribly adult. It's like I'm (potentially) important now, I have (potential) obligations, I'm doing things my grandma in Joplin probably never dreamed I could do. I'm not just that guy that works in that mall, I'm (potentially) interning for a law firm that is one of the cogs that makes international law somewhat real instead of only an abstract idea. I could have something on my resume for which other professionals would actually be impressed. More than once in the past week, I've looked around and asked myself "How did I get here?" On the other hand, I feel like there are a LOT fewer safety nets than anywhere else in my life. Even though I was at Seton Hall, I knew exactly when I was going home, what I was doing with my stuff all summer, what I was doing next year--everything was all planned out. Now, if I don't find a place to keep my stuff by May 8... then there's nowhere for my stuff to go. There's no "oops, bail me out" button that I can press without me physically going around and asking people to press it. It's so vastly different than having my parents around, and it's much more real than them leaving last August. From Bailey's perspective, what I'm doing is probably terribly exciting. From my perspective it's certainly exciting, but I feel an incredible degree of uncertainty with all of these proceedings. I guess that's to be expected.

In so many of the stories we've grown up reading (well, okay, I've grown up reading), the hero, at some point, always has to leave home to go on some journey, during which he or she will meet a memorable cast of characters, learn a lot about themselves, face seemingly impossible obstacles, and eventually, through a great feat of some kind or another, end up saving the world. Like so many people growing up, I've had visions of myself going somewhere far away, doing something incredible with my life, becoming a "somebody" that everybody else, in their normal, uninteresting lives, looks up to, admires, and wonders how on earth I did it. The difference now, at least the difference from now and any time before in my life, is that I'm actually faced with the opportunity to "go" and make something of myself on my own merits. Finding a house to sublet in South Orange is not something my Dad can help me with. Getting an internship with a law firm in Newark or with the United Nations isn't something where my mom can put in a good word for me. But, unlike a lot of people that grow up thinking they'll go far away that end up staying right next door their entire lives, I'm actually taking advantage of this (potential) opportunity. Maybe after college I'll move back to Missouri, go to law school, and live in Kansas City the rest of my life. Maybe I'll go to graduate school in Texas, or Florida, or Boston, or California, or Denver. All of this potential has always been "potential", but now, for really the first time (including when I picked to come out to Seton Hall), I feel like I'm actually (potentially) beginning to, in a small way, start making something of myself. I have no idea if I'll love it or hate it, if I will excel or fail miserably. But I know, or at least hope, that from now on out in my life I'll be doing something because of who I am, what I've done, who I know. Here I go. It seems like as good a time as any to start trying to save the world.