Catalogs

It struck me last week that I was almost criminally indecisive when it came to selecting a college. I don’t know why it took me, what, twenty-six years to realize what a pain in the ass I must have been, but there it is.

Like any other middle-class parents—and maybe even more so because they were college professors themselves—my mother and father began obsessing about my college years early. When I was roughly twelve, they began shuttling me to the dozens of extracurricular activities that would look good on my college resumé. A year later, they were plotting how to get me through high school in three years. And by the time I was fifteen, I was seeing some kind of freelance counselor who specialized in matching bright students with the perfect colleges.

I’d actually forgotten about that counselor until something dislodged a cupboard door in my cranium the other day and a pile of university catalogs came tumbling out. It was those very catalogs that I’d had to take home in huge, heavy stacks. After asking me obvious questions like, “Do you prefer small, intimate classrooms, or large classrooms with lots of students participating?”, or “How important to you is the coeducational experience?”, the counselor would grab armfuls of the things into a Richmond Public Library book bag and I’d cart them home to look over. “It’s your decision, after all,” she’d tell me.

I liked the catalogs. I enjoyed looking at their glossy covers and their photographs of happy, pretty students strolling with book bags under impossibly blue skies. I liked the notion that it might be possible for me to attend school somewhere exotic, like New Mexico or Idaho. I enjoyed reading each school’s mission statement that, though largely identical to the next and the one before it, somehow managed to convey the notion that only they could educate me in a manner befitting my industrious mind. And I particularly liked the course descriptions, even of classes I knew I’d never take, like organic chemistry or Russian language studies.

But I didn’t really choose. My parents gave up on the counselor and spent an entire summer driving up and down the east coast to college campuses, where I’d go on interminable tours and glower sullenly at residence halls and not even try to assimilate the differences between campuses. Through some alchemical process—and it’s really a mystery how it might have happened, since toward the end of the grueling ordeal I communicated only through grunts and shrugs—we managed to winnow down the stacks of catalogs to a handful. And from those, I applied through the early admission process to two: Duke University, where my parents had met and where I’d been born, and William and Mary, where my dad had gone to school.

I was accepted to both, and got the letters at roughly the same time, right after my last semester of high school had started. My parents suggested I accept them, and pull out of one when I’d finally determined which one really suited me. “It’s your choice, after all,” they said, over and over again. Since I didn’t want to make the decision at all, that was fine with me. I simply didn’t decided. Graduation came, and I hadn’t picked. The universities began sending my new student orientation packets, and I still hadn’t picked a winner. I even was assigned a dormitory and roommates at each school, and two weeks before I was due to arrive somewhere, I didn’t have a clue where I was going. I don’t even think I was aware that I should’ve been worried.

I can only imagine the hand-wringing that must have gone on behind the scenes. Neither of my parents was exactly a loosely-strung person, especially when it came to education. They didn’t pressure, though. Maybe they sensed what I suspect now: that the act of not choosing was probably my way of attempting to control what I felt was a runaway situation. Avoidance has been my lifelong solution to stressful situations. I dig in, hunker down, and wait for the turmoil to wash away. It really was my choice, after all, and perhaps I wanted to prolong what felt like the only part of the entire affair in which it felt like I had control.

Eventually, of course, I picked. No momentous occasion. I don’t even remember making the selection—which is a little odd, given that years of counseling and planning and plotting and reading and writing and work had gone into that one little nod at the catalog with the colonial brick buildings gracing the cover. I simply shrugged, made a final determination, and showed up two weeks later.

I used to wonder what might have happen if I’d chosen different catalogs—if I’d ended up in New Mexico, or New Hampshire, or Washington State. These days, I know better. I adapt and survive all kinds of climates and situations. I try not to fret about where I’ll end up, these days. What I need to remember is to make my choices before their destinations heave into sight, so close upon the horizon.