I've discovered who I am without anyone telling me who to be.
Editor's Note: Joey Parsons is co-host of the thebigda Podcast, where she and Dan Abbate explore authenticity, creativity, personal growth, and the often messy journey of becoming who we're meant to be.
Here we go again. The days creep shorter, the shadows stretch longer, and I can’t open my Duolingo app without wading through back-to-school ads. I feel a shiver — I will never not feel this dread-excitement-panic-joy.
A Crap Deal and an Apology
As my birthday is in mid-August, and school in the southwest always started back up shortly afterward, I was typically given school supplies as birthday gifts. A brand-new JanSport backpack, a fluorescent pink Trapper Keeper, and pencil erasers shaped like unicorns. School made me anxious and I hoarded tools that made me feel more in control. Birthday euphoria blurred into the unease of school starting.
It was only when I hit high school that I realized receiving school supplies as birthday presents was kind of a crap deal. My parents, knowing full well they were caught, agreed. Every few years on my birthday since turning 30-ish, I request restitutions.
Where's the Grit?
Years ago, around this time of year, my father gave me an out-of-the-blue apology. He’d just escorted my younger stepsister to college. She attended the same university I’d gone to, located about an hour south from our hometown. But a decade before, I’d gone all on my own.
I’d been given a quick refresher on how to change a tire, crossed fingers that would be the worst-case scenario, and was sent off to find my way with The Rand McNally Road Atlas.
No one helped me pack and unload my car. No one helped me decorate my dorm room, and thank God for that, as my walls were soon plastered with creepy life-sized Jane’s Addiction posters, and anything covered with ankhs.
I’m lately on a weird Instagram algorithm: I gawk at dorm room after dorm room, decked out in spectacular fashion, thousands of dollars spent to make them look as though they come with concierge service.
Where is the individuality? Where’s the grit? Where’s the sampling of new personalities, removed from parents for the first time?
I think it’s great that Dad took my stepsister to college. I’ve simply never once felt resentful no one did the same for me. There was something thrilling about being thrust into the proverbial fire.
I have a friend who runs the acting program at a renowned university, who casually mentioned an Introduction to Campus class she is tasked with teaching each fall. I asked her to back up and explain. Incoming freshmen are taught how to go about dropping or registering for a class, where the student health center and gym are, the location of the administrative building, those sorts of things.
I was gobsmacked.
The Roommate I Didn't Choose
When I showed up on campus as a wide-eyed, panicked freshman, I somehow scavenged a campus map, and was tossed a phone number to register for classes. One had to be on the phone, having dialed almost the whole number, and — as soon as the clock pinged 8 a.m., you punched that last digit, hoping to be first in queue to get your top choices.
I’d not chosen my corn-fed Midwestern dorm mate with whom I was obliged to adapt. I think my initial goth-girl impression was jarring for her as well. She ended up being a really cool person, just very, very different. Being crammed into a situation where I had to learn to live with someone so unlike myself broadened my perspective. That broader perspective has helped shape a fascinating life.
I say this all as a non-parent. I understand these are different times. I’m just musing about how grateful I am that I was left to my own devices much of the time. No tracking with smartphones. No looming over my grades or scrutinizing my socializing. I had good parents who cared about my safety. But I was given a great deal of trust and freedom.
Good Mischief
In high school, I was friends with a group of boys who pulled lots of pranks. One morning, my father summoned me to the front door. Placed on our porch was a giant turquoise “J” snatched from what now read “Big _o’s Hardware” — sneaked onto my stoop in the dead of night. I saw one of those friends recently: now married, fathered, and honest jobbed. Over a few beers, I asked him about this particular shenanigan. Turns out it was carefully planned over weeks, and executed with clumsy flair.
I “slept over” at Kelly’s house a lot, and she “slept over” at mine. We weren’t out drinking, we weren’t out drugging. We were out being free and creative, doing weird things — no one standing between us and experience. Sneaking into private rich-people pools. Watching The Hunger for the millionth time. Listening to Pink Floyd while huddled under tarps in the bed of my Toyota pickup, gazing at skies packed with stars. Talking for hours. Planning our lives. Good mischief.
Falling Isn't Failure
I’ve grown to love the fall out east. I still feel the dread-excitement-panic joy, though I tend to feel more excitement-joy than panic-dread.
But as the days get cooler and the leaves start to turn, I often feel the kick of how many decisions I had to make on my own. How many chances I needed to take. How many times I screwed up and learned from my mistakes. How I discovered what I liked and what I disliked through trial and error. How I learned what scared me. What empowered me. How to coexist with people very different from me.
I’ve discovered who I am without anyone telling me who to be.
I can’t imagine how much more anxious I’d feel today, had I not been allowed to learn that falling didn’t mean failure. I often fall. But I always get up…
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