Ball State University - Orient Yearbook (Muncie, IN)

Page 18 text:

Boggling red tape, glory-filled scholar- ships. Burdening tuition bills, servicable check-cashing. Helpful counseling for up- coming schedules, having those schedules marked “‘closed’’. . . all these conflicting elements and more, transpiring within the | stately Administration Building. Yq Each individual passes through those | doors with a specific problem, a probing 4 question; each leaves a little bit changed, faced with either added frustration or con- tent conclusion. Faculty mixing with student body; administration mingling with personne! and advisors — Ball State is a crossroads of frustrating and satisfying, struggling and gliding, emotional and technical elements of student life. !

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It’s an ugly night — cold and wet with loneliness. The steady motion of the bus casts me into a hynotic trance, and as | stare blankly, somehow that window frames my past. As pitch-black cornfields and rumbling thunder whisk by, so do the yesterdays. Flipping like pages in a diary, | catch glimpses of those stick-pony days, and of tears that wallowed from that childish ‘‘nobody-loves-me’’ syndrome. | feel as if my soul was spattered all over that sweating glass, reflecting like a mirror — separating me from the past and lurid future. Out THERE the world is crawling; time is ticking...ticking. | feel slimy and scared like a little lost kid, but there’s no Lost and Found — Daddy says there’s only a “Good Will.’ Well, I'm suf- focating in my own pent-up world...somewhere bet- ween going and arriving, being and becoming. The ties at home are slipping; the ominous future Is lurking, beckoning — and here | am JUST HANGING in nomad’s land. Stumbling and stubbing my toe too often, | find my barefoot independence is not free. When | first tasted that salty drop of independence, it tasted sweet, and no one was going to stand in my way. | had direction, FORCE, FREEDOM. | knew what | wanted and how to get it...1 had ME and an amazing amount of SELF-confidence. Rules and ties only confined me, so | snipped them, all of them. | was a new person — my interests had changed — so why did | need old, worn-out friends, or a griping, complaining family? They threatened my in- dependence, my individuality. It’s time to move on, “‘got no time to waste’’ — there’s so much to learn, so much to do. Never before had | felt so confident, so free... ...Or so forlorn. When those ‘‘moods” hit, | felt wret- ched — an idiot in an intellectual world, a joker with no talent. | had no commitments, no trusts, no one to turn to. When | clung to the wall, it never hugged back. | needed people; | needed my family; | needed old friends. 1 Student Life