COLUMN: "The Sappy Reader"

From Debra Pickett's "Studs In Strange Places," Spring '92. Here I am on a campus with no Wendy's and no Dairy Queen and no Taco Bell, and precious few left-handed desks if I may say, thinking that I should have just stayed in New Rochelle. While I'm sitting up in bed, shaking from the caffeine I took to keep me awake to study for my midterms and write my stupid papers so that I can get my obligatory B-pluses (Sorry if I sound bitter -- I am), my thoughts invariably wander to this question: "Why in hell am I staying here?" When I try and convince my history professor that the fact that I'm having a personal crisis is a perfectly valid reason for not taking my exam -- and when I am faced with more work than I can possibly finish before I am thirty -- I just have to wonder, "What am I doing?" Some days I just have this urge to run into the Undergraduate Admissions Office and scream, "What were you people thinking? What were you on?" On those days I return to my room and I curl up in bed and I just want to stay that way until absolutely everything just goes away. I feel like, three more years of this -- it just won't happen. I think about my high school and the principal who spoke jive (Just as an aside, he played sax in a funk band. They played our prom), and the many semi-literates who graduated with me. If you haven't guessed, I'll spell it out: I didn't go to prep school. Not by a long shot. And, sometimes, in a fit of traditional English-nerd, quasi-artsy person insecurity, I get this idea that I don't belong here -- like when I'm having a personal crisis. This is where it gets corny. I mean really corny. This is a thank you to the people who have kept me here. So that there is no confusion, this is for Dana, Bert, and Sue. Apply it to your own friends if you like, but I doubt that they are as cool as mine. Well, maybe. Anyway . . . A long, long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away), my best friend moved away from me. (Look, I said it was corny. Nobody's making you read this. Pay attention in class, why don't you?) She moved away from our semi-urban, decidedly-blue-collar-and extremely-hip town to the milk white, white bread, extremely white suburbs of northern New Jersey. When I went to meet her new friends, they were discussing the essays that they had written for their Princeton "aps." I was asked where I was applying (Why they could manage to say "applying," but not application I don't know -- I'm not from North Jersey), and I said, "Um, I dunno. Actually, I wasn't planning on going to college." Just for future reference, if you ever happen to be in North Jersey, be sure to discuss an essay that you've recently written, it seems to be a big social thing. I didn't hit it off with the new friends. And, later, when I changed my mind -- there didn't seem to be a huge job market for freelance dirt farmers as I had planned to be -- and decided to "ap," I no longer hit it off with my friends, either. There is, apparently, a tight bond that exists between future dirt farmers that simply cannot be shared with future preppy college kids. I cleaned myself up nice and got accepted here. I still wonder what the admissions people were thinking -- maybe I'm not the only former pothead at Penn. I had only one friend left. (Now is the point in the story where you pause and admire my strength of character. Aren't I awesome?) Actually, one friend and a guy. (So, I'm not exactly independent). And the friend and the guy got me through some pretty awful times. It's not so easy to clean up one's act and, quite honestly, I couldn't have done it without them. This isn't about them, though. As I pointed out, this is about Dana and Bert and Sue, and the personal crisis that I alluded to earlier (you know, the one I tried to tell my History professor about -- try and keep up). When the guy betrayed my trust and the best friend (who is in college somewhere else) couldn't be found, my amazing Penn friends stepped in. I don't remember how I met them, or when, exactly, we discovered we were sharing a common brain (Sue got the left side). But, suffice it to say, we did. And, now, I can run crying to Sue's room at three in the morning and find Dana and Bert there, too. I didn't think I could make it, clean and sober, without "the guy" (yes, I know I should mention his name, but, as I might have mentioned before, I'm a bitter chick), or, at least, my "best friend from home" (that would be Jill, for those who are collecting DP columnist trivia). But I am making it, and rather well, if I do say so myself. (This is another place to pause and admire my strength of character.) I was never sure that I was worth anything to anyone, and getting screwed over by my boyfriend made me really doubt myself yet again (I may get kicked out of my Women's Studies minor for writing this, but, hey, so I'm insecure . . . I'm also darn cute). But if my three most incredibly wonderful, fantastically cool friends are willing to get up at three o'clock for me, I must be worth something. This is just to say thanks! guys for everything. And to anyone, besides my friends, who is completely sappy enough to still be reading this: I hope you've found (or will find) friends as great as mine. But mine are taken, so find your own. That message goes to the sluts who were with my boyfriend, too. · Debra Pickett is a freshman English major from Franklin Township, New Jersey. Studs in Strange Places appears alternate Mondays.