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Sophomore year so far has been a wholly unique and interesting one for so many reasons. Some of these reasons are more obvious than others, such as new classes, new jobs and responsibilities, new friendships, and new pastimes and hobbies. I’m serving my last semester as the Vice President of Philanthropy for my fraternity, a role in which I helped raise record donation numbers to combat brain cancer and to support children whose parents suffer from cancer. I’m working as the Assistant to the Services Vice President for the Student Government Association, where I help research and synthesize university services policy for the student body. I’ve just taken the responsibility of acting as a mentor figure to two Freshman students here at the University. And over the summer, I worked my first real job as a Resident Advisor for the Governor’s Scholars Program on Centre College’s campus, where I had the opportunity to mentor and teach high achieving high school seniors from all different walks of life. In my experience, it is sometimes necessary that old connections, activities, hobbies, interests, and responsibilities must cease to accommodate new ones. In an ever-changing world where opportunity seems to swirl like a wildfire about me, I almost missed the quiet death of dependence on those responsible for getting me here.
I say death meaning an ongoing state of closure. Just as my independence as an adult person is not complete, so incomplete is the cessation of my reliance on my parents for survival in this world. Coming to college, in the first place, was obviously a major step in this direction, but last year as a (for lack of time) jobless student, I was very dependent on my family for financial support. Groceries and food were commodities I could not have afforded otherwise, and it was my parents’ generosity that helped me avoid campus dining when it felt necessary for my wellbeing. This year, after having worked all summer, I have enough money that I can make it to next summer without their help—with proper budgeting of course. I was dependent on my parents for a lot of psychological support last year as well. The stressors of college were very new to me, as classes in high school had never challenged me like those at the collegiate level were doing. As I continue to adjust, I’m finding myself less and less in need of support as I get better at managing my time and study habits.
The strangest thing about it is that as I continue to come into my own as a person, it gets harder and harder to recognize that my need for parental support is diminishing. As a child, one’s parents and family are typically their world because the family provides food, shelter, safety, and love in a place where all of those things might be difficult to come by otherwise. Some children have hopes and dreams that their parental relationship will remain the same for the rest of their lives. Some children look forward to growing up and becoming independent themselves. Either way, whether something to dream of in horror or excitement, the separation of one from their family seems to be imagined as some hard cutoff, a complete, sudden break from one life into the next. What I have been discovering, and now have enough hindsight to explain, is that in my experience it just fades out. There is no “one day a child is dependent and the next an adult is not,” dependence quietly slips away when you least expect it and you find that independence is there in its stead, as if it had been waiting for you the whole time.
The truth is, the entirety of your dependent life is meant to prepare you to find that independence when the time comes. I imagine that if parenting can be done correctly, its telos is something like this. I cannot thank my family enough for the life and opportunities they helped to provide for me, and I know that I will probably not be absolutely independent from them for a few more years, but I feel as though, sometime, somewhere, I went over the hill.
As with all death, however, life anew follows. I look forward to going home and seeing my parents, brother, grandparents, and dogs now like I used to look forward to going and seeing my friends. It’s like living in two worlds, each of them uniquely beautiful. I feel like when I am home, I could talk to my folks for hours about all of the fantastic stuff going on here. I love hanging out with my little brother, hearing about how his school is going and watching our shows together. He continues to impress me with his maturity (and ever growing height), which I don’t know would be quite so striking if I saw him all the time. I treasure home cooked meals more than anything I eat here (though I am learning to cook, myself!), and it brings me so much joy to go see the Bluegrass region I come from. The dynamic of dependence might have changed forever, but I find that life there is all the much sweeter in context. I am so fortunate to be a part of two worlds, to be in the process of such a transitory period in my life, and I look forward to seeing what wonders the metamorphosis that is assuming independence will yet bring.