They look at one another, searching for proof of their superiority. They have almost never read anything from the assigned reading list sent to them upon their acceptance at the school.
In contrast, at the back of the room sit the outsiders. Quiet, sometimes even sullen, they arrive at college shell-shocked from their four or more years spent enduring the horrors of lower education. Kept from the upper ranks of teenage society by their appearance, habits, interests, or any multitude of sins against the code of acceptable adolescent behavior, they have learned to look on from the outside. Often they are bitter about this, although they would never admit it.
In between the front and the back, always squarely in the middle, are the rank and file. Seemingly ordinary, they neither excelled nor failed. They were usually invited to the parties, even if they were never the center of attention once there. They may have enjoyed one or two shining moments on their journey to freshman year, but they are, by and large, unremarkable as individuals. However, one never dislikes them for this. In fact, their presence is comforting, for they can always be counted upon to hand their assignments in on time and contribute to class discussions.
As the first weeks of the semester pass, an interesting thing happens. The students who arrived filled with the buoyancy of popularity often discover that their stock has plummeted dramatically. No longer are they the prettiest, funniest, or most physically gifted. They’re now only one of many others who share the same gifts, hitherto thought to be completely their own. Struggling for attention, their belief in themselves falters. They lose their glow. Their eyes take on a bewildered look. This is a wholly new experience for them, and they have no idea how to regain their stature.
For their less-attractive peers, the process is reversed. What were once seen as flaws suddenly become useful tools. Thinking. Dissecting. Questioning. Once considered obstacles to conformity, these traits are forged into weapons of revenge and wielded with newfound skill. It quickly dawns on the dwellers in the back rows that life has changed. Generally they blossom, becoming more confident by the day as the selves that have lain dormant awaken and stretch their limbs. One by one, they move closer to the front, displacing their former tormentors and objects of jealousy and sending them into exile.
Now, this is not always true. Not every boy who bullied his way through school and girl whose lack of intellectual curiosity was pardoned due to her ample bosom and laxness of chastity is doomed to look back on the high school years as the golden ones of their lives. Nor does every student who ate lunch alone while thinking dark thoughts about the laughing clique nibbling their sandwiches two tables over enter an intellectual cocoon upon arrival at university and emerge three weeks late a golden-winged butterfly. However, it is not uncommon. College, unlike high school, is a wide-open playing field. Whereas before students lived in a closed community with a more or less immutable class structure (generally beginning with the jocks and descending through the uselessly beautiful before arriving at the merely smart), college is an entire world, with different continents and cultures and societies, some secret and some not. Success is attainable to all willing to put forth the effort, and it is this that ultimately distinguishes one student from another. If it is the formerly ignored who succeed more often than the formerly glorified, this is perhaps the universe’s way of maintaining some balance.
Another truth is that those in the middle tend to stay in the middle. It is safe there, and usually those students who have experienced such safety for most of their lives feel no need to test its boundaries. I say this having been one of those for whom being in the middle had become a way of life. I neither stood out nor hid. I simply was. Because of this, I found my first weeks at Penn State to be mostly a matter of figuring out where my classes were and how to get to them on time.
For Jack, however, things were slightly more difficult. Used to being a star, he now found himself one among many others stars. He still shined, but now his light was mixed with that of others who shined just as brightly. Even among his baseball teammates he was only one of several boys who had arrived there due to their ability to field a ball or hit it an impressive distance. Also, he was a freshman, a fact the older players would not let him or any of the other first-year players forget.
“I probably won’t even get to start,” Jack complained to me after his first meeting with the team. “Not until I’m a sophomore.”
I was only partially sympathetic. Although it had been only a few days, I was finding my classes to be exciting, and without Jack’s shadow to obscure me from view, I was beginning to see myself as someone who existed apart from him. I still loved him, though, and I wanted him to be happy. I spent several hours that night reassuring him that he was someone special, neglecting my reading of Beowulf for Survey of English Literature so that I could get on my knees and show him how wonderful I thought he was. Jack sat on the edge of the bed, his fingers entwined in my hair, and slowly his old confidence returned.
Because it was our first semester, we had mostly introductory classes assigned to all incoming students: American History I, Composition, Introduction to Critical Thinking, and the like. But we were allowed two electives each, courses we could take as a way of helping us decide what we might want to major in when the time came to declare our futures. I’d chosen Intro to Eastern Philosophy and, because my father demanded it, Fundamentals of Business Administration. Jack had opted for Art Appreciation and, because he thought it suited him, Public Speaking. As there were several sections of each of the basic classes, we found ourselves sharing only two. We each also had one class in common with Andy Kowalski, Jack his art appreciation class and me my course in philosophy.
As a result of these common threads, and also because he kept asking us, we found ourselves spending most of our free time with Andy in his room. Largely this was due to the fact that Andy’s stereo, beer, and pot were in the room, and it was easier for Jack and I to go up there than it was for him to carry it all down four flights of stairs to our room. Also it was because Chaz was so seldom there. Having befriended some other black students on campus, he was devoting a lot of his energy and time to helping them organize protests against the school administration’s allegedly racist policies. Still, he managed to find time to get high with us at least several times a week, during which he would chastise our lack of political awareness and we would ask if we could touch his afro, a request he always refused.
It was, I think, the third week of September when Andy first mentioned a girlfriend. “Her name is Linda, and she looks kind of like Linda McCartney, only with bigger tits,” he said. “She likes it when I bang her in the ass. Have you guys ever done that?”
He and I were supposed to be reading about the life of Lao-Tzu and the development of Taoism. Jack was supposed to be writing an essay about the role of slavery in launching the Civil War. Instead, we were listening to the Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin and smoking a joint. I’d never heard anything like the music of Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, and was blown away by the sound. I was stretched out on Chaz’s bed, while Andy sat on his with his back against the wall, and Jack sat cross-legged on the floor.
When Andy asked his question, Jack and I looked at one another and laughed. Andy looked at us. “What?” he said.
“We’ve done it,” I said, feeling brave because of my high.
“You guys have girls back home?” asked Andy.
“Nothing steady,” Jack said. “Just casual stuff.”
Andy nodded approvingly. “Yeah, Linda said I could see other chicks if I want to,” he said. “She’s really cool like that. We don’t tie each other down.”
“So, she can see other guys?” I asked him.
Andy shrugged. “Guys. Girls. Whatever she wants.”
“She likes girls?” said Jack.
“Who doesn’t?” replied Andy, grinning and picking up another beer. “Sometimes she and I do it with other girls, yeah. It’s no big deal.”
I wanted to ask Andy if he’d ever done it with another guy, but I couldn’t. For a boy from a small farm town, he was much more experienced than Jack and I. I was intimidated by what I thought of as his worldliness, so I sipped my beer and concentrated on Lao-Tzu. I was trying