Mid-College Crisis

I sat cramped, nestled behind the driver seat of my dad's 2-door, 4-passenger Audi, on route to Maryland.

My family and I had reached that point in the 6-hour trip home from Ohio. Fatigue and car sickness had eliminated any desire, or energy, for small talk, so our vehicle was reduced to a yawning driver, reclining mother with her nose in a book and a backseat padded with pillows and blankets and two college-aged sisters.

We had a nice rotation of music going: Weezer & John Mayer from mom's iPod, Early Madonna & Tom Petty from Dad's, Maroon 5 & a pop mix from Chelsea and the Pixies & Built to Spill from me.

I was content looking out the window. My sister lied upright, eyes closed, with iPod buds planted in her ears. I thought she was asleep until the minute I unplugged her iPod and she violently grabbed it back. Her eyes remained shut as she snapped "I'm still listening!". She looked creepy talking with her eyes closed and with an emotionless face, like a dead person talking or something equally as eerie.

All the silence and boredom made think way too much. Little things were ballooned to really be meaningful pre-meditated acts, just in disguise. Daydreaming was unavoidable. Hints of rationale would pop-up, but they were short-lived, quickly swallowed by another installment of the outlandish prospect.

My thoughts wavered between school and the future, as well as positive and the negative.
Among all the fantasy and "thinking", I came to the conclusion I'm too young to be jaded.

College work, internships, money and post-graduation plans have drained my outlook on life.

My dad made a good point when we were randomly talking in Ohio.

"Do you even really need an internship?"

I didn't know how to answer it. I've been conditioned to think I do. I mean, as far as I know if I don't get a summer internship I mind as well just come to grips that I won't be prepared for "the real world"? Is that true? Will I really not get a job if I didn't have a summer internship my junior year with a newspaper? I interned this past summer and I plan to intern at the Post-Standard in the fall, but should I just write myself off as a failure if I don't follow the model?

I want to learn German. I want to volunteer. I want to make a difference. I want to be healthy. I want broaden my horizons.

My dad thinks I should take a semester off and go to Germany. He said the best way to learn German is to go there and work, or get a German boyfriend.

I'm all for killing two birds with one stone.