Just when I thought I could be independent for a short time, I get roped into dependency.
My mom is on vacation this week. She’s visiting my grandmother in Florida for 7 days, and I assumed that I’d provide for myself until mom gets back on Saturday. I mean, you’d assume as I did that if you and your younger sibling were living in a house without any parents for a week that you’d have to get food yourself. Apparently, no one in my family wants me to try, since I’m being fed about 2/3 of my meals from others.
Grandparents offered dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow morning. Dad offered dinner tomorrow, and an aunt offered dinner Wednesday. And, of course, when someone offers, you HAVE to accept, else you look like a hermit or a douche or something that you don’t want to look like in front of family, so I essentially get roped into being dependent.
I hate being dependent. I was the first person in my family to really go away to college. My father went to a local college, mom went to community college. My experience in Binghamton has taught me how to provide for myself; I know how to buy food, prepare it and store it, and if I don’t, I know how to find out. College is all about being independent. That’s one of the main reasons why I look down on people who go to community college: there’s no independence. Community college might as well be called “extended high school”, because that’s all it really is. People who go to community college and don’t later go on to a school away from home are mentally stuck in real high school, depending the “glory days” grades 9-12 to carry over to the next 2 years of their lives.
At work, I deal with needy people all the time. They don’t know how to use a computer and they don’t want to learn how. These people are pathetic too. Not knowing how to do something is one thing; not wanting to keep learning places an unnecessary degree of dependence on others, and quite frankly, that’s weak. It’s a sign of laziness and stupidity to not do something yourself if it’s within your power. Of course, if someone calls me with a problem like “Outlook isn’t working” and it just so happens that the server is down, then it’s fair game. But, if someone want to know how to highlight text in Microsoft Word, and they don’t know enough to press F1 and look for the answer themselves, then it’s not fair game: that’s good enough to make me tell my co-workers how dumb they are.
The bottom line: I’m an independent person. Not being able to provide for myself is a frustrating situation to be in. I’ve often contemplated moving away just for the chance to be on my own and choose my own path. I live at home currently and work is a 10 minute drive away. If I had my way, I’d have the same job I have now somewhere else. Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, it doesn’t matter. I’d do it just to move away and show everyone, family included, that I can and will do things my way.