Then again, how hard was life for a twenty-one-year-old student? College was a bubble that kept the rest of the world at bay. There was an abundance of free time, friends who lived either with you or right next door, and an overwhelming sense of optimism about the future, even if you had no idea as to the specifics of what that might mean. In college, everyone accepted the fact that their lives would turn out exactly as planned, buoying them from one good memory to the next in a cascade of carefree three-day weekends.
She hesitated, changing her mind. Well, for people like Serena, anyway. Maria’s own experience had been different because she’d taken her education more seriously than most – she could remember being way too stressed way too often. In retrospect, she realized that she’d probably spent too much time studying and worrying about exams. She recalled working on papers until the wee hours of the morning, editing them over and over until every word was just right. At the time, it seemed like the most important thing in the world, but in the last few years, she’d begun to wonder why she’d taken it all so seriously. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and Mark Zuckerberg had dropped out of college, and they’d done okay, right? They intuitively understood that the world didn’t care about grades or even graduating, at least not in the long run, especially when compared to traits like creativity or persistence. Sure, her grades had likely helped her land her very first job with the district attorney’s office, but had anyone cared since then? When she’d been hired at the firm, they’d been interested only in her work experience and seemed to regard the first twenty-four years of her life as inconsequential. These days, Barney’s conversations were centered on her current work product, and Ken’s interests were of a different nature entirely.
Thinking back, she regretted not taking a year off after graduation and going backpacking through Europe, or volunteering for Teach for America or whatever. Frankly, it didn’t matter what she did as long as it was something interesting, but she’d been in such a headlong rush to grow up and become an adult that those thoughts had never even entered her mind. She didn’t always feel like she was really living, though, and she sometimes found herself regretting the choices she’d made. And on that subject, wasn’t she too young to have these kinds of regrets, anyway? Weren’t those supposed to start in middle age? Lord knows, her mom and dad didn’t seem to have any and they were middle-aged. Meanwhile, Serena acted as though she didn’t have a care in the world, either – so where had Maria gone wrong?
She blamed her melancholy thoughts on the pi?a coladas, whose effects she was still feeling a bit. Deciding to give herself a little more time before she got behind the wheel, she squinted at the pier and decided, Why not? Dusk was coming on, but she still had another hour or so before it was dark.
Turning around, she started that way, watching the chaotic activity as families began to depart the beach en masse. Sunburned kids, overtired and whining, trailed their equally sunburned and overtired parents, who were hauling boogie boards, coolers, umbrellas, and towels.