I was sitting outside my class about an hour ago, having arrived about 15 minutes before class started, and the door was locked.  There’s usually a class that meets in the same room right before my class meets, so it’s usually unlocked when we arrive; sometimes they’re still in there and we wait outside, but if they’ve already gone for the night we just let ourselves in and wait for the professor.  When I found the door to be locked tonight, I set my stuff down and just waited for the professor to show up.  Over the next 15 minutes, more and more people from my class showed up, and almost all of them came right up next to me by the door and tried to open it.  Then they looked baffled that it was locked.

Umm…why would I be standing outside the classroom if it was unlocked and ready for our class to come inside?  Do you think I enjoy leaning against brick walls?  Do you think I like the noisy hallway filled with obnoxious students walking around on their cell phones talking about how hard the homework was last week and where they’re going to go to drink and unwind?  No, I don’t.  I could understand if maybe you’re the first one to show up after me and maybe there is some crazy chance you don’t recognize me as the guy in the back of class who constantly asks questions because he doesn’t understand the material in the slightest.  But when 30 other students from the same class you’ve been in all semester are also standing outside, don’t presume to walk up and think you’ll be able to open the door and save us from our inability to turn a handle and apply some form of push/pull effort.

I know I get frustrated easily, but come on people!  If the door was unlocked and the classroom empty – I’d be inside!  Same principle applies at work more often that I’d like to admit.  I’ll walk up to the elevators and push the bottom to summon the magical transport device, and 5 seconds later someone else will walk up and push the same (already glowing) button again.  Did I not do it right?  Do you think the elevator is going to come any faster?  If that was the case, I would’ve pushed the button 24 times upon arrival and your ass would still be waiting in the lobby since I would already be on my ascent to my floor.  Wake up people.  Pay attention.  Stop being so ridiculously oblivious to your surroundings.  Or I’ll start kicking you in the shin.

The whole point of the class is to find what career path you are best suited for and encourage you to pursue it.  Part of that is accomplished by various personality tests which are then used in comparison to the job you currently occupy to determine whether or not you’re suited to be where you are in life right now.  Most of the time the answer is no.  How convenient.  It all seems so hokey to me.  I don’t like putting myself up on an examination table to be poked and prodded only to be told that I’ve made dumb choices in life and need to take a whole new direction in life.  If that’s really the case, chances are I’ll get to the point where I can make that decision myself without having to sit through a ridiculous 15 week course where I repeat a dumb mantra every class meeting.

I’m all for self-improvement and working to reach your full potential, but I fully believe that I have the ability to do that on my own.  I know what my opinion of my current career choice is, and I know where I want to be in 5 years.  Heck, I know where I want to be in 10 years.  Maybe for some people it’s not that easy.  I just feel incredibly restricted in this course, like I’m being told by someone that doesn’t know me what I should be doing with my life based on a personality test I had to take for the course.  Didn’t she get the memo that I don’t like being told what to do?  I’m pretty sure I’ve faxed it to anyone I come in contact with more than once just to make sure they’re aware.

On top of all that, the class is very much interaction oriented, and every class includes a large amount of discussion and ends in some form of group exercises where you’re lumped in with other people of your “type” and you all discuss things that you supposedly do the same way.  What does this mean to me?  It means she specifically states in her syllabus that no laptops are allowed and cell phones must be turned off.  I will grudgingly abide by the former, but she can pry my blackberry from my cold dead hands before I turn it off and put it away.

I have extreme ADD and do not like having to focus on only one thing at a time.  My mind races and I can’t concentrate and I’ll quickly lose interest and my mind will wander.  However, throughout my years of undergraduate and graduate studies, I’ve found that having my laptop helps me to divide my focus and enable me to actually pay better attention.  I know it sounds strange to say that splitting my focus makes me more attentive, but it’s true.  My mind works much better when it’s chugging away at three or four things at a time (ie, listening to the professor, surfing internet on laptop, texting on blackberry, etc.), and without that my mind races with no real goal in sight.  Suffice it to say, without my laptop in this class I find myself staring at the walls and not being able to focus on the professor for 3 hours as she rambles on and on about how extroverted she is.  I get it – you’re loud and happy about it.  Can I play on my computer now?

I was lazy in high school, plain and simple.  Who wasn’t?  But looking back, I want to jump back in time, kick myself in the shin, and yell at myself to stop being a lazy ass.  I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if things had gone differently.  I bounced back and forth between high schools due to my own bad decisions.  I fought with both parents constantly, jumping from one’s house to the other, never realizing the common denominator was me, not them.  I used my “horrible home life” as an excuse to not give a crap about anything else.  I waited until the last minute to do homework (if I did it at all) and never really went the extra mile on projects.  I am no genius by any means, but I also have no problem saying it wasn’t because I didn’t have the ability – it was because I didn’t have the desire.

I’d come home after school every day and sit around watching TV and playing on the computer.  When I lived with my dad for 2 years my afternoons consisted of coming home and making a snack, watching “Jeopardy” and “Card Sharks” on the Game Show channel, sneaking onto the computer when nobody was home, then sitting in my room all night on the phone complaining to my friends about my miserable life.

Life was so easy back then.  Homework was always one or two worksheets with a day or two allotted for completion, and if there was ever a paper to be written it was always just a couple pages long and you usually had a week or two to write it.  What was wrong with me back then that I couldn’t put forth the tiniest effort in order to keep my grades up where they could’ve been?  I used to stress over bad grades, which put me in a bad mode, which made me less willing to work on homework, which resulted in more bad grades; it was a vicious cycle that I refused to acknowledge.

I look back now and see all the things I could’ve done differently and it just irks me that it would’ve been so easy.  A mere matter of dedicating an hour or two a night to something meaningful as opposed to watching rerun after rerun of “Friends” and “Star Trek: Voyager”.  It’s still difficult for me to make the decision to forego plans with friends so I can work on a paper or meet with a study group, but I do it because I know it’s what needs to be done.

Is this what it’s like to be a grown up?