ASHLYEE HICKMAN
Living Editor
The cool thing about college is that we’re actually legitimate adults. We’re 18 and older so basically we can do whatever we want. That’s right, total independence.
Take my last dentist trip for example. My close-yet-so-far 17-year-old sister had to wait as one our parents signed those nifty waivers. I’m next: “I’m 18,” I snoot, “I can sign my own.” Look at me, I’m cool.
After getting my routine cleaning, drilling, the works, I sat in accomplishment: “I got to sign my own papers,” I thought, “Call me Alpha-Ash. I am woman, hear me roar.”
“OK, Ms. Hickman,” said one of the employees, “Your co-pay is $438.” Newsflash. “Oh,” I answered, “I think you need to call my Mommy.”
Then it hit me: Maybe I’m not that well-off on my own.
Maybe I don’t want to be.
Do you know what I could do with $438? How many Tri-Delta sweatshirts I could buy? I calculated: I can buy nine.
Then I thought about college tuition: I could get 2,391 issues of Seventeen Magazine.
And then about how much I ran up my mom’s credit card last semester, with that money I could buy 46 copies of Mean Girls.
With the extra money from the study abroad fees I could purchase 688 copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The cost of my books would get me 13 trips to Disneyland or a few season passes.
Sorority dues and those two tickets to the Justin Timberlake concert is the equivalent to 62 of those pink bedazzled Mickey Mouse ears.
I realized that in the near future I will be faced with the plague that looms over the heads of most of humanity: bills.
Yucky. That’s all I can say.
Our plans for the future are often romanticized, and we fail to take into account those details of how we are to, I don’t know, eat because that does cost money. We need health insurance. That’s going to be great.
Pretty soon we’ll all have to buy toilet paper and watch our money literally go down the toilet.
There will be a time when our parental units will no longer clean up our mess.
I falsely thought that the time is now, but I realize that they are involved more so now or just as much as they were before.
College is like we’re back in the womb, where our parents can pump our fiscal nutrients through wire transfers. It’s great and all but eventually we do come out and it’s so not pretty—my parents showed me pictures one time. Disgusting.
Being at Pepperdine doesn’t help either. Here, it’s like a designer womb with luxurious amenities available at our every whim. But I’m not complaining.
I guess this serves as all the more reason to be thankful for what we have and appreciate those who go out of their way to make this happen for us. So I send my thanks to God, my mom, dad, grandparents, the Mazos, Stringer, my church family and the rest of my support system.
Thank you, Josh Schwartz, Shonda Rhimes, and J.J. Abrams for making my weeks brighter with “The O.C.,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Lost.”
Thank you, Sallie Mae even though you’ll be breathing down my neck and sending your payment assassins after me in about three more years.
Wow, that feels really good. So before we go into our “I’m a big kid now” rants let us remember who pays eight thousand Happy Meals for our cars.
Submitted 03-22-2007