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Instead of textbooks, I crammed alcohol abuse, destroying my life and the painful process of getting sober all within my 6-year degree.
Despite pulling it together in my final year, I was a lousy student. When I look back on those memories, it’s through the lens of red, solo-cup-tinted glasses, filled with what-ifs and regrets.
Don’t get me wrong, I always wanted to do my master's. But if I had gotten J-school right the first time around, I wouldn’t be here now.
You can understand why a part of me is terrified I’ll mess this up a second time — that, any day now, one of those ghosts is going to reach out and take hold of me again.
It probably wasn’t the best sign that I showed up late to grad school orientation, just as I did for undergrad eight years earlier. (Old habits die hard, I guess).
Back then, a couple of older classmates offered to show me the school gym after I said I liked working out. That was, until they told me the membership cost $60.
Maybe $60 felt like a lot of money to a first-year. Maybe it was my social anxiety about being around people my 19-year-old self thought were cooler than me. Either way, I left without a membership that day.
On my way back to my dorm, I ran into another group of students who took me to the student bar and bought me my first beer.
I’ve gone over the story of what happened next enough times already. But I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed in the gym.
Would I have developed a drinking problem? Would I have learned some better coping strategies? Would I have become a model student, the one I wish I had been?
I’ll never know.
But 8 years is a long time. When I confide in my peers and professors about my fears, they say the same thing: “The man you're describing isn’t the man I see today.”
I think it's about time I start believing them.
I know how to manage stress and social anxiety in a healthy way. I made it a point to start writing for the university newspaper and join my nearest AA chapter. I also seriously doubt any freshman would give a free beer to (as the kids would say) an ‘unc’ like me.
So the next time I find myself confronting a ghost, I’ll remember that’s all it is — a ghost, stuck in the past.
I’m going to keep moving forward and do this J-School thing right.
Or maybe I won't. Who knows what the universe has in store for me. We’ll have to wait until midterms to find out.
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