Wasted
Oh no, that title doesn't mean what it usually does.

I'm in LA still, housesitting for some friends who are on vacation; I think I've mentioned that before.

I've known this friend since college, and sometimes over the summer breaks, this friend would let me store things at his parents' house while I went home to the opposite coast -- things like boxes of crap I didn't need for the summer and my car. Storing my car at his house was great. I never took very good care of my car, and my friend's father was ashamed to have a dirty car in his driveway, so he would wash it and fix minor things on it to boot.

Anyways, one summer, I stored some boxes at this friend's house, and some other friends' houses. When I returned in the fall, one box of files and papers from my classes was nowhere to be found. I asked around and everyone checked their garages, but the box mysteriously disappeared. It wasn't a big deal because it was just less crap I had to decide to get rid of. Well, this friend I'm housesitting for, his parents moved from LA to Colorado about 6 months ago. And lo and behold, they found this box of papers and files. It's heavy, and was too expensive to ship to me, so here I am, sorting through them, trying to decide what, if anything, I'd like to keep.

You know, it's depressing and makes me feel as if I've wasted my college education. (Thus, the title of this post.) First of all, I was a horrible student. I was very inconsistent, getting everything from A's to D's in my French class. No wonder my professor called me lazy. I took a philosophy of law class, and my only recollection is going to class and falling asleep. Oh, and learning of this thing called the slippery slope. Going over my notes/exams/handouts, there are lots of familiar terms and names. Posner, Model Penal Code, retributive theory of punishment, equal protection, Bakke, etc. Even in my physics classes, which was my major, I barely scraped by, and if it weren't for the generous curve and extra credit projects and research papers (which I was kind of good at), I would have failed every single class.

I'm kind of depressed, but I have to put this in perspective. I haven't used much, if any, of that physics knowledge in the last five years. How many people remember the things they learned almost 10 years ago? And my English papers were ok, if somewhat forcefully cynical. I know my college experience was about much more than learning facts to store in my brain; it was more about learning to socialize, to function in the world, to learn about the world, to broaden my horizons. All the time I spent not studying was spent learning about people, making friends, making connections, learning about myself, and learning about God. So I shouldn't beat myself up so much. Even if I did get better grades, would I necessarily be in a better place? Sure, I don't go to the top law school in the country, but I don't need to. I'm also generally happy with the person I am today -- I'm happy with the choices I've made, with the experiences I've had, and with the people I've met.

That being said, I think I'm done going through the yellowed reminders of all the things I should have learned and didn't, or did learn and forgot. Time for bed. I'm going to meet up with an old college friend tomorrow.