David McRaney : Journalist

David McRaney | Journalist

Our opportunities on uneven ground

This afternoon I did something I knew I ought not and looked into going to graduate school at the Columbia School of Journalism.

Tuition is nearly $44,000 for nine months of classes. Add to that living expenses, and it would cost about $62,000 to get a master's degree.

The sensation after reading those figures is hard to convey. Imagine collapsing from the flu but speed it up like a time-lapsed movie of a flower opening. You want to laugh a silly little laugh as the two parts of your mind - the one with the gall to even go to the website and the one that knows you grew up in a mobile home - crash into each other.

The sensation travels up your limbs like a paper towel dipped in ink.

I've had a great run in college. I found something I love doing and stuck with it. I love telling stories, turning over rocks and running around showing off the worms I find.

I've been looking over my resume and rubbing my head. This is the only time I'll ever feel this way, these few weeks before I earn a bachelor's degree. The finality of it, the rushing in of emotions long held back by the routine of student life is overwhelming.

Neither of my parents ever attended a single class in college. My grandfather didn't finish high school. My grandmother worked in a factory until she needed a cane. Odd jobs and financial aid have put me through school, and my family has watched on hoping for the best.

I've met a lot of people like this at USM. They too are taking the first steps in their family toward a more robust family tree. They too understand how fortunate they are to get an education. They too are driven.

Over the last few years, I've been hurtling toward graduation with blinders on. But, recently I've won awards and scholarships. I've helmed the student newspaper for a year, and I've tried to put my name out there. Now, I have job offers and opportunities closing in like an iron maiden. So, with confidence and courage vibrating inside of me, I can taste the fear of what comes next.

All this disarray between my temples is making me do things like look into graduate school at Columbia University. Silly rabbit - you know that's not for you.

I traveled home last weekend. My parents no longer live in the same place they did when I graduated from high school, so I decided to go look at the old homestead in an attempt to feel my place in the stream of time.

Looking on the old trailer, I could feel parts of my heart grinding against my chest. It was like reading a diary from childhood. I had obtained objectivity, and for the first time I saw where I came from in the way the meter man must have.

Of course, it's eroded some, and Katrina scattered things a bit. But, the clarity of the moment wasn't cheapened. It was overgrown and slouching. Still, I walked the old property as an alien, a ghost in negative, until I was heavy with the past.

I left in the same fog you suffer after spending too much time at a grave. I smoked three cigarettes in silence on the drive back to Hattiesburg.

Then, a few minutes ago I realized what I had seen, what I had unearthed.

I grew up poor, knowing I had limited opportunities. I grew up knowing I wasn't getting a top-notch education. USM was inexpensive and close to home, so I enrolled and hit the ground running.

When you spend five years in college you lose all perspective. Everything is marinated in idealism and cooked on the fires of the classics. Everyone is talking about jobs and degrees, resumes and internships. Nothing is static or solid. Either it's long dead or on the horizon.

For professors, it's the real world. For students, the real world is everything else.

When I went home, I saw my old self and all the possible timelines shooting off from that boy. I imagined myself never going to USM and never taking a chance with journalism. I suddenly felt titanic - a bite so big you think it will never hit your stomach.

But, as wide as I have stretched the opportunities I can pursue, I know I can't go to Columbia University and never could. And, the crazy thing about returning to that knowledge is how guilty I feel for even dipping my toe into such a sea.

People in my position should be grateful. Yearning to go higher feels like a sin. Maybe it is.

Originally published in The Student Printz on March 6, 2007