Ask anyone older than 35 and feeling judgmental — our generation is materialistic. We love owning and buying things. We adore massive quantities of, well, stuff.
Personally, I’m very susceptible to materialism. I get emotionally attached to items very easily.
From technological gadgets to clothing to simple knick-knacks, my generation has already started collecting items that are meaningful for their sentimental or monetary value.
How many times have you worn a shirt or an old pair of shoes that are special to you because you own them, because they hold a comforting story in the folds of their fabric?
Of course, there are problems that come with being a generation as materialistic as ours, but at this point it is pretty much a fact. So here is a thing to consider: When your life is built out of things, what happens when you come to college?
For most of my life, I lived in one house, in one neighborhood, in one town.
Packing up everything I owned into the car to come to UF was a sobering experience. My bags barely fit into my mom’s Prius, but there it was: everything in my life had been packed neatly into a compact, fuel-efficient, hybrid vehicle.
It’s easy to feel insignificant like that. It’s easy to feel swept away, pulled under by the tide of anonymity that rises as you drive up to college, as you move into your dorm for the first time, as you sit in your first lecture.
Boxing up my life that first time, and every time after in the four years of moving from place to place, reminds me of a serious lesson. In college, and for most of your young adult life, you live a transient existence.
You move every year. You might even move every semester. From dorm to apartment, from apartment to summer housing, from your hometown to your first new house, your years in college carry with them a daunting feeling of rootlessness.
Our generation, with all of our materialistic tendencies and need for items to help reaffirm our connections with places and people, occupies an in-between space while in school. We drift aimlessly from place to place, trying to discover who we are and where our next home will be.
Next year, I’ll be moving to apartment-style living. Over the summer I’ll be traveling, and the little box on my to-do list about securing my living accommodations remains ominously unchecked.
It’s a scary thing to see the material of one’s life packed away into just a few cardboard containers. All that I am and all the roots I’ve planted can be packed away into a couple of boxes, an oversized suitcase and a minifridge.
However, even in this field of anonymity, there are seeds of the future.
It’s true that we each occupy such a tiny space in the overall existence of UF and the world. But remember — just because your life is small doesn’t mean it’s insignificant.
Our small space is flexible. Our few boxes and bags are portable, expectant of a greater time yet to come. There is a future unrolling in front of every student at UF.
College is a time of transitions. We may want to safeguard ourselves in materialism, but we should remember that what we’ve accomplished and the relationships we’ve built now are all that we’ve needed so far in life. These things have the potential for growth.
Sally Greider is a UF English and public relations sophomore. Her column appears on Tuesdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 2/17/2015 under the headline “College transience will not last, but it’s not a bad thing"]
