Life shaping serendipity
When I graduated from college in the mid-1970’s, free love was starting to accumulate costs. Streakers were replacing protestors as the main quad entertainment. There were still plenty of reasons to be distracted from one’s studies.
One ripe summer night going into my senior year, I found myself deep in Kerouac narratives with a girlfriend who was fast becoming my co-conspirator in a late summer romance. I was still uneasy from an ominous call earlier in the day. It was the dean’s secretary calling to set up a meeting with the dean. She tendered no agenda, so my only choice was to ruin the better part of an otherwise good day in pre-dread speculation.
“The dean’s my dad,” my girlfriend smirked with the snap of a wet locker room towel.
By then, I had survived being number 16 in the last Vietnam draft and learning to drive a stick shift trekking up mountain roads in a van full of equally unhappy goats and chickens. None of it prepared me for that moment squandered in a frantic audit of recent events in search of any possible indiscretion that could have reached the ears of her stern dean of a father.
The next morning, I kept the appointment.
“Son, do you know why I called you in?” “No sir, I do not.”
“I’ve been looking at your records.” This is something I have never found to preface to anything congratulatory.
“I see you need to declare a major.”
It was my senior year, and my renaissance soul had been well known for roaming a wide countryside of interests. I had accumulated the proper portfolio of hours at that point, but with no clear path to choosing among things like classical languages, communication, theater, and psychology.
After the drama of a few unnecessary moments of reflection, I though this was a better time to assert questions than deliver questionable assertions.
“What do I have the most credits in?” “It looks like psychology.”
“Let’s go with that,” I announced, barely containing the facade of confidence that betrayed my long history of viewing ambivalence as the mother of opportunity.
I did graduate that year, long after parting friendly company with the dean’s daughter. As it turned out, psychology became the cornerstone of a career that’s served me for over three decades, the wisdom of my procrastination proving to be a source of life-shaping serendipity.
… from a forthcoming book on the power of our stories
June 25th, 2008 10:55
Now there’s a book that I’ll buy, read and heartily recommend. Splendid story.