COLUMN: Growning older, growing wiser

From Malik Wilson's, "RosZ," Fall '99 From Malik Wilson's, "RosZ," Fall '99A few days before I left for college, my father told me he wanted to talk. Something seemed very weird. Instead of his normal, easy going expression, he looked serious. Still, there was something in his eyes that assured me this wasn't a "Malik Wilson, you're in big trouble talk." My father looked out of the living room window, searching for the right words. I watched him, my uneasiness growing. The "conversation" that ensued was fairly similar to others we had had on the subject during my teenage years. And although my memory has faded with time, I'm sure if you had asked me then what he said this would be all that I remembered: "OK," I said. "OK," my father said. The clock in the living room ticked. I looked at my shoes. My father glanced at the window. If real life were television, it would have been a perfect time for a commercial. Our savior appeared in the form of a nosy 10 year old stumbling heavily in the room. "What are you guys talking about?" he said, louder than seemed appropriate. "Nothing," my father said, "nothing." · When I came to Penn as a freshman in 1995, I was sure that I knew all there was to know about women. My father had tried to share his own experience with me, but to no avail. Billie Dee Williams could have tried to give me advice and I wouldn't have listened. I truly felt that as I entered college in the fall of 1995, I had already heard it all, seen it all and done it all. But the excitement of college, I soon learned, was that regardless of what you had seen or done before, you couldn't possibly be prepared for everything. Regardless of what you imagined your level of experience to be, the social dynamic of an unrestricted life away from home brought new possibilities to the fore. I remember vividly the first time I spent the night in my girlfriend's room. I say "spent the night" instead of "slept" because anyone who has ever tried to sleep with someone else on a University of Pennsylvania regulation size mattress -- approximately three feet long by two feet wide -- knows how difficult this is. They cough, you wake up. They wiggle their foot, you wake up. You sleep so close to the person that you can usually tell what they're dreaming. The excitement of that first night -- which was the only excitement of that first night -- was knowing that I could stay all night in her room and no one else had to know. I could even sleep late the next day and not return to my house until the afternoon. In fact, I could even have breakfast at her house and I didn't have to tell anybody! Awww, yeah! Breakfast! I remember how grown I used to feel when my friends from home would call me on her phone or when my friends at Penn would stop by her room to see me. I liked having a shaving kit at her house, even if I only used it once a month. If it wasn't for the towel-sized mattress, or the fact that I had to be signed in after hours, or the fact that we used Penn Escort to go out on dates, I would've been a grown man. Now a senior, I look back and smile at that version of myself, 18 going on 25, three sparkling years of college ahead of me, happy exactly where I was. In 1995, you couldn't tell Malik Wilson anything. Not that there weren't problems. Unfortunately, many of the problems stemmed from the fact that you couldn't tell Malik Wilson anything. Although I wanted to wear the clothes of adulthood, I was still wearing a boy's extra-large. Throughout the course of that year, I learned that being an adult, and having an adult relationship, required more than just playing house. Looking back at freshman year, I often wonder if I moved too fast. Who was I to think that I was ready for a serious relationship at 17? If I wasn't always sure of my own actions that year, how could I have expected someone to be sure of their actions? The truth is, I don't know if I was ready or not. Maybe I was too young to get involved in something so serious. Maybe I should have waited until I was more mature. But I also know that I wouldn't change anything about that year. Everything that happened taught me something important. Everything I went through helped me to understand more about who I was and where I wanted to be. Deciding what you will take for granted and what you must experience on your own is at the heart of what it means to be a college student. Despite all the advice you receive from your family and your friends, you end up having to pick and choose what you will believe and what you will have to experience for yourself. If college is training camp for the rest of your life, one of the major things we learn, hopefully, is how to function as mature adults in our various relationships. The four years we spend here are as much about navigating through social relationships as they are about navigating through Calculus 140. Because regardless of how smart you are, your ability to work with people, both professionally and personally, will not only impact how successful you are at work, it will impact how successful you are in life. The last time my little brother came to visit me, I tried to have the sex talk with him. I stumbled over my words, avoiding all the embarrassing terms, only offering censored, confusing anecdotes. Five minutes after I had begun, my brother stopped me. "Malik," he asked, "what have you been talking about?" "Nothing," I said, "nothing."