The first four years of my education were paved on the 

backs of people I stepped over in high school,

the narcissitic salutatorian plotting rebellion 

from the front row, and the 

free tuition may have been a blessing, but the room & board & life were misnomers, 

a bounty on my head where the federal government says my only escape is death. But there's a reprieve if I'm incarcerated or sick.

 

One hundred and forty-five credit hours later I am out of tuition-free time, 

and where some people graduate at 122 and leave with a degree to become a degree-carrying citizen, 

my time was spent learning things I wanted to learn 

like the tree outside of the window in my fiction workshop class, whose branches sway this way, 

like where the accent of my calc professor came from when he describes triangles as anthropomorphic beings waiting to be understood by someone anyone who can calculate the inside angles of an isosceles. 

 

Swearing that I would never do it, 

swearing that I would take out loans and work through the degree that I want, however impractical, however cemented in pipes with other children's dreams, 

the remainder of my education is controlled by these people I call my parents. 

--Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful-- 

But my double major triple minor is null and void and can't I just switch to that business degree everyone wanted?

The answer is no. 

 

And at 23, I lay on my bedroom floor after two hours of my mother asking me what my plans are:

What could I possibly do with such a useless degree? Because the liberal arts I've been nursing fall short of engineering. 

 

What are my plans? It's a question I never know the answer to. 

I'm quitting my job of four years in four weeks, 

the questions I receive when I share this news amount to what do you want to do instead. 

And the truth is, I don't have a plan 

other than seek a change that doesn't leave me contemplating the ills of capitalism when I should be sleeping. Because I am drowning in cookie cutter smile sales, where novelty gifts and edgy greeting cards have become the staples of my challenges. 

 

What are my plans? you ask? To do anything, to go anywhere that I can breathe.