Getting burnt and becoming jaded

In September I had a conversation with a friend who’s a graduate student at UNC. I casually brought up that his program has an unusually large number of attractive women. He said that a lot of them are either dating someone, married, or about to be married. He then mentioned something that I never really thought about before. He said (paraphrasing) “when many of these girls are young and in college, that’s when they are looking to fall in love with someone. But as they get older and have more experience, they become jaded.”

 

Later that week I was at the Duke UVA football game and was talking to someone who is a recruiter for a company in Raleigh. Earlier that week she was at UNC interviewing some of my friend’s classmates. I asked her if she has observed any noticeable differences between students who “go straight through” (students who begin their graduate program immediately upon completion of their undergraduate degree) as opposed to those who have spent a couple of years in the workplace. She said she has definitely noticed that those who have worked “have been burnt” and instead of talking about what they are excited about doing, are more likely to talk about what they don’t want to do and ask specific questions on things such as working on the weekends. 

 

The two conversations got me thinking about all the idealism I had when I was in college and how over the past nine years much of it has morphed into cynicism. I am at a loss as to explain how this happened. I cannot attribute this to any single reason or one particular event. Most likely it’s the result of various experiences I have had over the years; experiences at work, experiences with different people, experiences with relationships, even my experience at Kenan-Flagler has made me more pessimistic about society at large (hopefully at a later date I will get to blog about some of the specific encounters that I am thinking about).

 

When I see undergrads at UNC with all their youth, energy, and idealism, it is their idealism that I envy the most. I cannot help but to think that this idealism almost amounts to a type of innocence – a virtue that they have from being unaware of exactly how the world works or from not having experienced firsthand the meanness that man is capable of.  What I fear most for myself is just how the next nine years will span out. Will I become more jaded, continue to get burnt, and become even more cynical? Or will things happen that will restore my idealism and also my hope in mankind. While I consider the latter to be unlikely, I do have reasons to be optimistic. With all the stuff that I have experienced, the fact that I continue to do many of the things that I do (like write this blog, for example) is a testament that I am still an idealist at heart.