It's hard to know what to do.
That's as true when you're 42 (or 82, for all I know) as it is when you're 22, a freshly minted graduate looking out at the way beyond. The questions are different later, but the answers are just as tricky.
We're all the product of a series of choices, some good, some bad, that accrete and become a life. At this time of year, when Stanford's newest graduates roll out from the Farm and begin to seed their own lives, the choices seem monumental and life-determining. Should I take this job? Go back to school? Drive to Montana?
Brian Eule, '01, a student intern at Stanford, writes about the choice he made on page 42. Brian gave up a job offer in an interesting city doing what he loves most, writing, to live with his college buddies in Boston. Just for the heck of it. We've talked about his choice a few times--and every time we do, I hear myself sounding decidedly middle-aged.
If advice were my specialty, I'd be a teacher instead of a journalist. Lacking native wisdom, I quote other sources. "So-and-so would say," I assert. Or, worse, my own regret seeps in, tainting the opinion and sabotaging credibility. Self-absorbed, or perhaps just out of ideas, I grasp for the nearest handhold, personal experience. What young person hasn't heard an older person say, "If I had it to do over. . . ." Take risks, we tell these kids--be bold, follow your heart, live a little. Never mind the student loans hovering over your shoulder--who needs a job when you could be trekking across Tibet, watching sunsets?
Yeah, well. The reality is grainier. The truth is, getting a job is as much of an adventure as taking off to an exotic land far from reliable transport. In fact, it has many of the same elements: anxiety, excitement, new shoes.
We have to trust that there will be opportunities for adventure in even mundane affairs. They will be low-key, seldom obvious, and more genuinely human in scope--coaching your first Little League game or riding your bike to work instead of driving. They may not hold as much promise for revelation as a jungle foray rife with extravagant hardships, but not everybody will make it to Borneo.
I like stories, including Brian's, about people who make unconventional choices. There are several in this issue. One is the memoir on page 50 about a 1930s Stanford lad not quite ready to toss off boyhood. He and some friends cook up an idea both ridiculous and sublime--camp in the Sierra and work their tails off digging for gold they probably won't find. They get rich, too, in a manner of speaking.
There are others. A shy but determined woman named Noelle Hanrahan spends much of her time interviewing prison inmates around the country and then sharing their stories (page 38); four Stanford alums help operate a home for seriously ill aids patients in San Francisco (page 40); Kelley Puckett, a 30-something new father, spins moral tales using a teenage superhero as his protagonist (page 70).
These stories bracket several decades of Stanford lives, but all point to the same place, I think. They are about people trying to figure it out, to make a life that makes sense and is useful to somebody besides themselves.
The latest class has been Farmed out now, Brian and the rest. They'll do fine, I'm sure. Brian, especially. He's living in one of the world's great cities, among friends, exploring. And I hear the Red Sox are pretty good this year.
