Subway Rides

The doors of the train take an exceptionally long time to open at the Union Square stop. It's not just today, they take longer at this stop everyday-something about the cars aligning. Even though I know they won't open right away, I still stand shoulder to shoulder with all the other passengers locked in a ferocious, silent, passive aggressive battle to be the first off the train. We stare through the murky plastic at the people on the other side, also standing shoulder to shoulder, engaged in the same pointless and unspoken dispute.

Every pregnant second that passes I feel more and more uncertain of the fact that the doors will ever open. I imagine the horror of being trapped in this packed subway car next to these strangers who, even on the best days, stare as if they are plotting how best to murder one another. I wonder how long it will take for chaos to ensue after it has been established that the doors will not be opening.

I imagine one woman strangling another with her head phones. A man breaks his Kindle over someones head while a child sinks its teeth into his calf. The old lady sitting down starts hacking away at the legs of those standing with her formidable plastic cane while the people outside the doors stand watching, not giving an inch.

When the doors do open, it's all I can do not to run off the train and away from the crazed strangers.

All The Time In The World

    The last few months before graduation were perhaps the most stressful of my college career. It was not because of the school work, I had developed a strategy for dealing with insane amounts of work which involved a twenty-four ounce can of Red Bull, an isolated room in the library, and a long stick for poking anyone within a fifteen foot circumference who attempted to approach me. 

    Rather, it was the terrifying prospect of not having the comforting title of “college student” anymore. When someone asked me what I was doing with my life I could respond that I was going to school and the pressure was off, at least partially. I could shrug off the other unpleasant questions like “What are your plans for the future?” or “Where will you go for graduate school?” because being in school implied that I would figure it out along the way. I was in college and everyone knew that going to college was the only way that you could get a job and make money and be successful. The future? I couldn't be bothered to worry about it, my Creative Writing degree would take care of that when the time came.

   Somewhere in my subconscious I must have been aware of how utterly unprepared I was. This awareness started to manifest itself in the final few months of my senior year. I was extremely anxious and grew irritable whenever someone brought up the topic of graduation. I entertained wild notions of intentionally failing all my classes just so that I would be forced to stay another semester and thereby buy myself a little more time to figure things out.

    Needless to say, I did not fail my classes. I attended the Commencement ceremony and it was not until I was sitting among row after row of black angular hats, sweating under the synthetic fabric and fiddling with the program that I actually felt excited about graduating. It wasn't any of the speeches at graduation that inspired or moved me, but something one of my professors had said to me in the final weeks as I sat in her office feeling inept.

    

“You will never have more time than you do right now.”

   Although it didn't feel like it, I knew that she was right. Having just graduated college with no obligations to anyone but myself, no real job and no plans for the future: I have all the time in the world.