Shannanigan's Search for More...

It's really strange to sit and look at who I've become. I remember at the age of 12 lying in my top bunk above my 10-year-old sister, staring at the closet door with our crayon drawing taped up on it, and thinking to myself "Am I going to be 12 forever?" It wasn't a heppy thought...12 was going by too slowly for me, and it was a painful time for me because of family matters. I also remember thinking at the time "One day, a long time from now, I am going to remember thinking this tonight."

I was right.

I remember imagining what I was going to be like as a college student, because you see, in my family, college was unquestionable; it was what came after high school, there was no other option. I imagined myself lying on my stomach on a bed in a dorm room, my feet in the air and a pen in my mouth as I read a textbook. I figured I would be single, focusing on school and enjoying all of the stories I got to hear and people I got to meet. I love meeting new people. I thought I'd be at a big, expensive school that I had a scholarship too, and I'd be surrounded by lots of friends who were all as interested in learning new things as I was...

Funny to see how differently things always turn out to be.

Eight years later I am sitting in a small house on a hill overlooking one of the top ten most beautiful beaches in the world. The small house belongs to my boyfriend's mother, and I practically live here with them, though I do have a dorm over at the tiny Univiersity of the Virgin Islands. The school is by no means large, expensive, or full of students thirsty for knowledge. There are only 16 English majors, most of them who chose it just to get an "easy" degree, since it requires the least amount of credits to graduate. I did get a scholarship, and I do have a few friends interested in learning...I even work as a Writing Tutor with three other tutors interested in literature and writing.

So, I got some of my dream, not all of it, but enough of it for me to have not decided to leave yet. I do think of leaving often, but then I think of how good and simple life is...and how good it will be if I stay. I have a wonderful, hard working boyfriend who, though he did not choose to go to college, understands why I chose to do so despite the many job offers I had that would have paid just fine. I am covered to go to school for two more years, and am pretty much gauranteed a teaching job (my dream job) upon graduation due to the local need for teachers. At this very moment there are surveyors on the hill below the house I am in, staking out the land that my boyfriend is allowed to build his house on. The architect called Thursday and said that the plans were all drawn up, and they can start building. At the age of 19, my boyfriend is building his house. Amazing.

It seems like my future is so set. Even if for some reason me and Chris aren't together forever, teachers here can get special low-interest loans to buy houses for themselves. Life could be so easy.

But I've never liked for things to be too easy. That gets boring.

I think I'll wind up spicing it up down the line, start a tutoring business or something...

But the option remains to spice it up NOW, to just run away and challenge myself at a larger, more demanding school. Oh, must I be so impatient? I've always said that if I lost my scholarship for some reason or if Chris and I didn't last, that I'd run back to California within a week. I still think I would, I still think that those are the things keeping me here. It's my choice to hold those up over my other wants,

and my choice if I decide to re-arrange my priorities.