FOMO: Searching for something better

These past eighteen months have produced an impressive range of disconcerting dreams, dreams that leave me groggy and often depressed first thing in the morning. The most common themes are college memories and dreams prompted by social media and television scenes from the prior day.

One of the things I remember all too well from my college days and that regularly haunts my dreams was and continues to be the idea that wherever I was on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night, I was driven by the fear that I was missing out -- FOMO -- before the acronym became part of the vernacular. First, let me explain some history.

As a high schooler in Eden, the weekend was not the social release that I experienced in college. Weekends in Eden more likely meant chores like picking grapes, painting the barn, cleaning out the shed, mowing grass, pruning grapes, etc. There was not much meaningful social life on the weekend in a small, rural, western New York town in the 1960's outside of school dances and basketball games. College was a revelation in the freedom it provided, with lots of free hours and minimal-to-none adult supervision. Classes were fifteen hours a week. There were no chores. We did not have to clean our bedrooms, our bathrooms, or our public spaces. No lawns to mow, no animals to feed, no snow to plow or to shovel, and no grapes to prune or pick. I was both responsible and scared enough to stay somewhat devoted to my studies from Sunday night until Thursday afternoon. Yet as quickly became apparent, the three-day social weekend was time for a change of pace, an interruption. To be sure, a looming test or paper deadline might alter this three-day vacation a bit, and I was also disciplined (or guilty) enough to make the trek across campus each Sunday morning for Mass in the off-campus Newman House. So habits are deeply ingrained.

So the ritual was established. And it soon became apparent that even though I had the freedom to escape any sense of academic responsibility for three days each week, I also lacked the resources and the information to make the best choices. Throw in a heated, stoked sea of raging hormones and hundreds of proximate young women, the three-day week end often became an ongoing search for "something better" or "somewhere else" where I believed "something better" was happening, or "where the girls are." Beer was another factor, as both a lubricant of social interaction and a cost of "doing business" on a limited budget.

Pre-planning fro the week end occurred during the academic work week, trying to identify and to develop my options. Was there going to be a good movie in the lecture halls that might create a social situation? This was not a date, just a chance to get (female) friends to 'go' to the movie with me. What about the campus pub? a floor party in a dorm? a party off-campus? But wait, do have money for the movie, the pub, or for getting off campus? "Eating out" was basically limited to a tiny 'joint' just west of the Vestal Parkway entrance to campus. For the most part, limited funds meant both limited activities and limited geographic options, meaning limited to as far as I could walk in ten minutes. The campus was isolated from off campus bars and eateries, with fences and an entry check-point in operation every night. There was a quiet but clear town-gown tension, with the locals seemingly happy to have us fenced in and separated from their children and traditional values.

As a junior professor in Lawrence, the equation shifted a little, due to a bit more liquidity, both in my wallet and in my drinking habits. Most academic 'work' remained restricted to Monday through Thursday. There were more options. I had more money. I had comparable freedom of time management. That last point remains as an unusual element of my career, at least when I think of my peers. While I did spend fifteen university years in 'full-time' administration, the other 35 years always offered the flexibility of schedule that professorial life offers. And even in administrative years, there was no time clock, no punching in, no close supervision.

Let me take off on a tangent for a moment. I entered professorial work at the perfect moment. The number of jobs, the salaries, the perks, were all increasing. And this continued for at least twenty years before the tide turned around the end of the century. In this respect I was very, very lucky. And let's not forget just how affordable my first nine years of college were, with very low costs, several scholarships, and a compressed schedule for moving from freshman (1969) to first-year assistant professor (1978). Nine years of spending (very little, at that) were followed by forty-one years and over $6 million in earnings.

Back on topic....unsurprisingly, this weekend ethos no longer exists for me. Whereas I used to go out at ten o'clock and go to bed well past midnight, these days I am usually in bed by ten o'clock.

To be continued....