And hilarity does not ensue.
My friends are so sick of hearing about my inability to make decisions. I can tell. The consistent background of light sobbing as I stare pleadingly at them while curled up in a ball in their rooms, the incessant barraging of redundant facebook IM’s, even the doomed silence I occasionally lapse into, are all probably very irritating.
“Flip a coin,” my reasonable, level-headed companions say. But I will not flip a coin, because I cannot trust such momentous life decisions as a third date with a Very Nice Boy, dropping a class, and which semester to go abroad, to chance.
“Make a pro-cons list,” some might say. A pros-and-cons list has never gotten me anywhere ever. We on this Earth do not know the pros, and we do not know the cons. Our worlds and our identities are infused with the incandescently beautiful illusions that we create for ourselves, and that we delight when others share with us. We might sometimes be saved by the grace of an accurate sense of intuition, or safely calculate ourselves to fortune and security. But no one is 100% sure about anything.
“Go with your gut.” Or sometimes, “Follow your heart.” These are the people who were for some reason forced to read the Madeline book way too many times. They know the terrible thing that I am unable to admit to myself, that I’ve probably already made up my mind. Yes, at this moment, I probably know for damn sure where I am going to go abroad. I am just too cowardly to let go of the could-have-been’s of every other possibility.
Take, for example, Tufts. Tufts, the best thing that’s ever happened to me, lux of my life (except for the occasional power outage), school of and maker of my dreams. It was always obviously Tufts. I clearly recall standing in my kitchen during winter break, right after I’d sent in an Early Decision application to a different school, hadn’t really researched Tufts at all beyond brochures, hadn’t seen the campus or ever been to Boston, hadn’t started the application, was applying to twelve schools. It was then that it dawned on me that, while it would be great if I got into the other school, I didn’t think I was going to, and I was going to go to Tufts.
Yet in the final throes of the decisionmaking process, I was at a loss. I was getting a slightly cheaper deal from a small, quirky school in the middle of Iowa. I would know what I was getting into. I would go from my own Midwestern suburb to a different Midwestern suburb. I would be close to my family, and far from the steely cruelty that reportedly frosted over the hearts of all Bostonians. Under their perpetually overcast skies, the Bostonians would most likely run me over with their erratic driving, or at least send a firm pimp-slap my way if I accidentally made eye contact or smiled in public. And I had blended in so effortlessly amongst the pajamas and the flannel shirts at the Iowan college. When I visited Tufts for a day, I felt rather palpably Midwestern.
After reading countless online reviews, tearing apart websites, and consulting a small village worth of people, I somehow decided on Tufts. I thought there would be moments when I would be like, “What if I’d gone to the other school,” but no, no, there were not.
Similarly, I have spent hours on the couch on our porch, surrounded by travel guidebooks from the library, anxiously reading websites and student reviews on abroad programs online. I officially have an Excel spreadsheet. It is a problem.
I was several hours in today, trying to find the school of one program in the foldout map of Beijing from a Frommer’s guidebook, when my 18-year-old brother came back from Band Camp and I started my befuddled rant. China might be cool, but China is hard. Some people can’t do it. What if I had a bad semester? What if I didn’t like China? I don’t do well around smoke or bad air. What if I was miserable in the pollution? I could go somewhere like Chile. It would be sunny, I could stay with a host family, hike around, brush up on my Spanish. And yet I would never get another chance to really learn Chinese, and going to the other end of the world could be amazing.
Sibling pointed out that this was exactly how I had sounded before Tufts. Go to China, he said. It would be completely different. It would be awesome, and I would have fun, and there was a really fast train. When I tried to argue, sibling told me impatiently that I had already made up my mind, and fell asleep on the porch floor.
Well you know, I’m not so sure about that. I hope I don’t screw it up.
