Wunderkind II, for the long-post challenged

So, college. I finally get there. It's immediately clear that I am not going to "fit in" with the girls on my floor, because I do not have enough money (that's the other isolating factor: money, the kind that buys designer jeans and shoes; we lacked it), and having grown up in the country too young to drive I have never been to a party where drinking occurs so I am so not ready to participate in frat culture. The first night of college, I cried for hours, deciding since I was damn well a year younger than everyone else I was damn well going to postpone college for a year until I was "ready" for it.

I didn't, and eventually found my home among the, yes, "honors" kids in the honors program, the smart, weirdly dressed lot, most of whom also had no use for frat culture. By senior year, I'm pretty happy and adequately friended and I have a long-term, hot, popular boyfriend which makes me feel hot and, for once, like a socially admirable girl (though also jealous). I am also cutting a swath through the writing workshops. I was kind of a writing weirdo, but by senior seminar I've settled out in the handful of "serious" writers. At age 19, I write a good story, one people tell me is good enough to publish. (And I wish I'd done it then, because I sure as hell haven't had any luck with that thing since I started actually sending stuff out like three years ago.)

At graduation time, I win all the writing prizes, and with them two impressive checks. I don't get into the Iowa Writer's Workshop, but I get into three decently-impressive MFA programs, including one at Sarah Lawrence which turns me on but which I don't believe I can afford. How would my life have been different had I moved to Bronxville, New York, instead of staying in the midwest? It's strange to contemplate.

That summer after college, I am 20 years old and full of belief in myself. Carson McCullers published her first story, Wunderkind, at 19 years old, and I am aware that I am right there. I read Nicholson Baker's U and I, about his crazy rivalry with John Updike. I read about how Updike published his first The New Yorker story at 25, and when Baker's first story is also taken by The New Yorker at 25, he knows he's on his way to being as famous as John Updike.

Twenty-five, hm? That's five years from now. That's two years after I'll be done with my MFA program. Surely I'll have a story in The New Yorker, or at least some impressive literary mag, by then.

Bravado and optimism, and grad school revealed that it wasn't going to be the smooth upward flight I imagined. But age still comforted me. I was by two or three years the youngest MFA student, and that lasted for two or three years. Several colleagues were 10, 15, 20 years older than me. This isn't exactly charitable, but my age was sort of one thing I had going for me. When more self-assured (and closed-minded) writers made sweeping generalizations about me and my writing (specifically, about how I didn't do it right), I narrowed my eyes and thought Oh yeah? Well you're 34 and you and I are in the same damn program. When *I'm* 34, I'm so going to already have a book and will be far beyond where you are now. So bite me. (Actually, I still might make this one. :) )

In other words, age was a sort of grounds for forgiving myself for fucking up, for being inadequate. I had a lot of time. I had a lot to learn. I wasn't perfect, but considering how much less experience I had at everything than everyone else, I was doing pretty well.

And yeah, there was some self-satisfaction in it. I took pride in it, being the youngest. It made me feel a little bit like I was going to be the one to beat the odds, to make it into the impressive career, not just burn out and sputter, overcome by the normalness and ennui of life. I hate you, public school, for being so boring that I didn't want to try, and so easy that I could be lazy and still stand out, for making me believe that mere "talent" and "intelligence" of my sort would automatically be rewarded, even with little effort on my part.

But I took five-and-a-half years to actually get my MFA, and I'm now years and years older than the other PhD kids taking their exams. People always ask me, "So, what are you up to, writing your dissertation?" No, I say. I haven't even taken my exams. For awhile, I was able to congratulate myself on my job: I was 27 when I had my first full-time professor job. That's as young as even any of the golden boys. But when the year was up, I turned back into a pumpkin, and all I've had since are a series of rejections: "When you are farther along in your career..." Take off your mother's high heels; it's time for you go put on your Mary Janes and practice rope-skipping in the backyard.

I'm too old now to publish my first book at a wildly impressive age. I'm not energetic enough any more to struggle like I used to. We're both (CV and I) too old to be taking out massive loans instead of earning money. Some days there's despair... a since of having overstayed my welcome. Yes. I've been here 8 years, and I turned in my exam proposal but it was only draft one of what needs "a lot of focus." After 8 years, I'm still only BEGINNING. And this makes me tired, and it makes feel sometimes like I didn't manage to live up to my potential, my promise.

I realize this sounds kind of ridiculous: I'm only 28. But my role is different in the world, and my self-perception has not yet caught up. I was a seven-year-old reading Animal Farm and earning the title of genius, and now I'm just a sort of normal woman who finds it difficult to keep up with laundry let alone make quick work of Anti-Oedipus and other tomes on my reading list. I know how fast semesters go, and how you hold on tight and just hope to get through, and that therefore I can't assume that five years actually is enough time to write a book, or even to write a story that will be published in the greatest magazines, or even any magazine.

And I know that, just because you were called "smart" your whole life and kept by yourself in a little pen, doesn't mean that you will always be distinct, or that it will be easy to accomplish things, or that you will be successful, in this world of institutional ridiculousness. This is a good lesson. But it's like how I keep running into door jambs instead of walking through the door. "I do that too," my husband says. "It takes awhile for body image to catch up." We're both 20 useful pounds heavier than we were a year or two ago.

So that is the adjustment I have to make. Losing my status as "youngest" has also meant losing a mode of self-forgiveness. It has meant losing also a little spark of arrogance, the spark that makes it possible to leap. I've suddenly just remembered what my writing genie said to me when I was graduating college. In grad school, they'll try to tell you you are doing it wrong. But stay arrogant. Stay arrogant. Don't listen when they tell you you can't do it that way, that your way is wrong, or that you are taking too long, or that you are not impressive now that you are old as bright young PhD students go.

I've lost it. I've lost it. Can I get it back?