But I owe someone in the Housing Department a big thank you. Somehow, that person read between the lines and figured out that a future math major who enjoys filling out forms, who is so compulsively organized that she single-handedly organized her brother's medical school applications and who aspires to one day rule a small country would make the perfect roommate for a future comparative literature major who has been known to sleep under her pile of clean laundry to avoid having to fold it and put it away and who has been known to start important applications the night before they're due. In spite of being polar opposites, we each ended up with exactly what we needed: I got someone to shepherd me through college, and she got someone to take care of.
Some people grow up when they come to college. They learn to do their own laundry, to open their own mail, to take out the trash, that you can't eat cereal for every meal. They adapt to a life where mom and dad are too far away to get in the car and come bail them out of problems. The rest of us find ourselves a Josephine.
I'm truly not sure how I would have made it through the two-and-a-half years without her. Unlike me, she reads Deputy Registrar Robert Bromfield's e-mails when she gets them, as opposed to a couple of weeks later. She knows how to navigate room draw, and she understands SCORE. She is there to remind me that making to-do lists is only half the battle and that in the end I actually have to do the things on them. This, of course, begs the question of how on earth I'm going to survive in Madrid next semester with Josephine thousands of miles away.
The truth is I could get it together on my own. I could figure out the mysterious workings of university websites; I could actually do the things I'm supposed to do without being nagged. Though it may seem like Josephine has taken on my mother's role, my mom never actually had to remind me to do these things when I was still living at home; I just did them. I could do all these things, but I don't want to. I like relying on Josephine. I like being taken care of. And I like giving her the satisfaction of taking care of me. It lets me pretend that even though I'm in college, I don't have to grow up; that I can continue to fly by the seat of my pants with the attitude that somehow, everything will work out in the end.
I like that illusion. It makes this whole college-verging-on-real-world thing less scary because it makes it seem less real. I get to pretend that I exist in a state of ignorant bliss and that I barely get by, and then when I do well, it's exciting. And when I screw up, it's less of a big deal because it's unexpected. I get to pretend not to care, Josephine gets to indulge her obsessive love for organization, and everybody's happy.
I suppose that means, as I prepare to leave for Spain, that this is that moment that people are talking about when you finally grow up and take on the responsibilities of an adult. This is something that Jews are supposed to do at the age of 13, when they have a bar or bat mitzvah, and I imagine I'd be a much more together person if my parents had gotten their acts together back then, but no matter. My time has come. When I leave for Spain, I will finally stand on my own two feet and take on the responsibilities of adulthood.
Well, at least until next fall.
Alexis Levinson is a comparative literature major from Santa Monica, Calif. She can be reached at arlevins@princeton.edu.
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