Bachelor degree burns
A premonition, a work in progress. You’re running. Four years of constant motion. Six, if you hit something hard enough along the way. An addiction. A marriage. A tragedy. But you keep going, finals fast approaching. Another essay, another round on the way to your ambition: masses of tassels and robes at the flash-photo moment, crowds slow-clapping to the sound of your name, and an inspirational speech ending.
Illustration credit: Braden Jones
But, blinders on, you run because it means passing another test. Keep running, keep passing challenges as they occur, and it’ll be Christmas. Maybe you can slow down then. Breathe easy and reduce four months to the unforgettable: a conversation, a curse, a kiss. You carry these for the rest of your life, whether you want to or not.
You survive university. But it’s nothing compared to the fight post-graduation. Depression strikes graduates in exceptionally high numbers. You’ve stopped moving. You look around. Your friends are everywhere but here. You have a piece of paper and a handful of memories. Making your own luck is harder than you remember. But you trained to make life easier, more opportunities. What happened?
A preface, belated. Inspirational sports films make it to cinemas every year because the sport only serves as a metaphor for life. Boxing narratives in particular remain viable because the metaphor is so poignant. Life is fighting cancer, the war on drugs, a friend, or, hardest of all, to stay motivated. Life brims with constant conflict; the quality changes, not the quantity. And boxing, like sex or magic, always provides the perfect metaphor for reframing one’s view of life.
A perception, altered. You’ve been fooled. The graduation scene so oft depicted, imagined, isn’t one of crowning achievement. You don robes the way boxers do before climbing into the ring. It symbolizes your entrance into the fight you’ve put years of blood and sweat to reach. Graduation is not the accomplishment. It’s a stepping stone that proves you can fight among the best.
A plan, unfolded. Last winter in New England I listened to a Ph.D. moan about the lack of opportunities. Aggravated, I got Will Hunting on him with, “You paid $150,000 on an education you can get for a $1.50 in late charges at the public library.” But more than anything I wanted to backhand him bloody with what the hell did you expect? That you fought your way to a title shot and it would be easy once you got there? Bachelors? No options. Masters? Teach, maybe. PhD? Make life easier. He forgot education is just a way to compete against better talent.
A postscript, on taking the punishment. University is only the training sequence, a four-minute montage in a 90-minute film. But it prepares you to fight for a human existence worth living. It’s like working your way to a title shot while you’re here, and then entering the heavyweight championship once you graduate. It doesn’t get easier. It doesn’t get handed to you. It’ll demand more than you have to give. You’ll be fighting the fiercest, meanest competition in the world. People with the most to lose. People who think they need to protect what they’ve got. Money. Power. Reputation. If you haven’t learned yet that evil only exists because we allow it to continue, your training here is nothing.
Or maybe it’ll go a little easier than you thought. You win the good fight. People love you. Jesus loves you. But as much as people wanted you to become their champion, now they’ll want to see you get knocked down.
In a champion, people see themselves rising to a challenge they didn’t believe they could measure up to, but aspired to dream of. They want you knocked down the way they’ve been knocked down, had things taken from them that they didn’t want taken. So they’ll love you and hate you in the same breath—for being better than they are and showing them what they can be if they’re willing to take the hits and keep fighting for something more beautiful than safety.
Their perception of tragedy is misplaced. They think dying is strange and hard because they haven’t written a story worth reading. A tragic life is only a story unwritten, cut off before it finished the telling, one that didn’t reach for goodness, justice, beauty.
But you reach for those things, don’t you? At least, you still have time: a couple weeks, another semester, a few more years. You’re learning how to get hit and keep moving forward. Because you don’t become a legend for university exploits. You won’t be remembered here five years from now. But you learn virtue, how to achieve greatness, in the small decisions you make here. How to throw a haymaker. How to hold your tongue. How to live with a curse.
A.K. Skulstad
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