Quarterlife

A friend of mine from high school intends to be a teacher. He's basically done with college, graduates soon, and is even applying to various school districts around the country. Because I've known him for a while, and even employed him at Electroids back when the demand was insane, he's been putting me down as a reference on the job applications.

Yesterday I got an automated email from one of these school districts asking that, as a person listed as a reference, I fill out a brief questionnaire about this friend.

Most of the questions were basic, obvious stuff: rating various qualities from "below average" to "outstanding." After those were some more specific questions, like how I know the applicant and how long. Without thinking about it, I entered three years and continued on down the page.

When I reached the end I went back to check everything, making sure I hadn't said anything too damaging, then I looked at that "3 years" I'd selected. I did some math, and realized I'd known him for seven years. Junior year of high school was seven years ago.

That number hit me like a bag of golf balls.

Whenever I've had to reassure myself that I'm still a young person, I've counted off the years since high school and reveled in the relative slightness of it. I graduated in 2004, though. It's been almost 5 years now. I think that's too distant to be used as a mile-marker now.

Then I realize that this friend is the same age as me, and he's only a cap, gown, and background check away from being a school teacher. A teacher. The guy standing in front of the room and not sitting in the back.

For 13 years my life always revolved somehow around one or more teachers. Like it or not, they dictated nearly everything about what I would do in a day and how I looked at my life going forward. There was always a clearly drawn faction line, though. Teachers on one side, everybody else on the other. Teachers always represented everything I wasn't. Now, I could probably better pass myself off as a teacher than a student.

This is alarming.

It seems to be a common phenomenon in our society that people never seem able to leave high school behind. As much as I try to shirk it, my brain still operates in high school mode. I always have an underlying feeling of dread that I'm not where I'm supposed to be, that I've forgotten about some assignment, that I'll get caught not doing what I'm supposed to. I could do anything I want now, but some part of me will always expect to need a permission slip signed first.

I think this happens because, for a lot of people, high school is the last time our lives are so rigorously structured. Unless you join the military or go to prison, it's unlikely that your daily whereabouts and activities will ever be so oppressively monitored and regulated. After school, people stop being freshman or seniors and just become people.

I spent every moment of high school waiting for the day when I'd be free of this control, but now that I am I can still feel the reverberations, and like a conditioned lab rat I'd probably rather return to the maze where I know there'll be cheese than escape into the real world and find my own damn cheese.

I can't even remember school as a series of events, but more like one protracted state of mind. I dont remember a single day of 4th grade or anything I did there, but I remember how 4th grade felt. I can't even remember the teacher's name, or picture her face. I remember my mental impression of her, though, compared to previous teachers.

The only moment of my school life I remember vividly is my last day of high school, effectively my last day of real school. After I'd taken my last two finals, gotten my navy blue cap and gown, and participated in the mandatory "senior walk" which was invented to prevent the previous traditional "senior rampage," we all went to a school-organized party at a nearby park. I remember it so well I could sell tickets to the video in my head.

I remember standing there with the two friends I had to my name, one who would later become a teacher and another who would become just as clueless about adulthood as myself, and watching everybody else play volleyball or eat catered hamburgers. I remember feeling like I should be feeling what they're feeling, some kind of release or freedom.

I couldn't, though. All I could think about was that some day I would look back on this day and wish I could go back. I wouldn't see this as the end of my oppressive life in state-run institutionalized learning, but I'd see it as the last time anything made sense, and I knew exactly what I'd be doing the next day.

I just expected it would take a lot longer for that to happen.