This is it, the life-changing moment, the what-will-I-be-for-therest-of-my-life reveal. Or, more accurately, the what-will-I-be-doing-for-the-next-three-years reveal.
I have read the articles and heard from the career counselors that no one has a career for life anymore, and we’ll all change jobs two hundred times and end up working in tech industries that don’t exist yet, and then robots will replace those jobs, and we’ll end up floating heads in glass cases buying things through our AI companions as the seas rise up to slowly consume us (Zach and I started co-writing a sci-fi novel based on this premise a year ago—it was going to be the first in a nine-book series, until we argued for a week over what to name the main character and then got distracted and forgot about it), and none of this really matters, except this moment right here, this am-I-getting-into-university-and-if-I-am-what-university-will-it-be-and-what-course-will-I-be-studying moment. This feels like it does matter, it really, really matters.
University offers are announced online at 2 p.m. It’s 1:57 p.m. I have spent the past hour and forty-three minutes freaking out: deep-breathing, pacing, chewing five pieces of gum at once until my jaw aches, blocking social media on my phone so I don’t have to see reactions from other people, regretting the blocking and trying to delete the social-media blocking app. An irrational feeling of dread settled on me this morning, that maybe I actually misread my score last year, that maybe it was all a mistake, that maybe it’s not good enough and I won’t be offered anything, anywhere.
At least this is an improvement on how I behaved before our final results were announced, when I got up at six a.m. and sat in my closet for an hour, refusing to speak to Mum and Dad.
The clock ticks over. I log in, and the page loads very, very slowly. And then there it is. The degree I wanted, bachelor of arts, at the university I wanted, the University of Melbourne.
There. I did it.
Everything as expected. My choice has been made.
It feels … anticlimactic.
I thought I would be filled with relief and happiness, and I am, sort of. A slice of my future is now hard and concrete. But still, for the hours and hours of study I went through in year twelve, I thought I would feel something … more. I want to jump around the room and scream and cry with happiness. Instead I’m already thinking about how big and scary the university is, and how I have no idea what I want to major in. And what does an arts degree get you anyway? Why didn’t I apply for a law degree or a business degree or something vaguely useful? Or, on the other hand, why didn’t I apply for something risky and creative and interesting? Why am I even going to university? I should be traveling, experiencing real life. Nothing I’ve ever done has felt like real life to me.
I call Mum, then Dad, and they’re both filled with excitement and pride, which should make me feel better, but somehow makes me feel worse, partly because I have to have pretty much the same conversation twice.
I think maybe I am very bad at being happy for myself.
I text Lucy, and she doesn’t respond, which is strange. I want to text Zach, but I can’t, because we’re still fighting, or, at least, I’m still furious at him and he hasn’t apologized and I don’t know where we stand with each other, and the fact that our friendship is a mess right now is one of the main factors contributing to my unease about everything.
Then my phone rings, and Lucy’s name appears on the screen.
“Hi,” I say.
“I’m outside.”
“My house?”
“Yes.”
“Well, come in.”
I go to the front door, and Lucy is standing there, looking upset. “What’s wrong?” I say.
“I didn’t get in.”
“Oh, Luce.”
I hug her, and lead her into the lounge room. I fill the kettle, putting a bag of Lucy’s favorite herbal tea into the most soothing mug we own, which is so big that it is more bowl than cup.
Lucy starts pacing in my lounge room. “Okay, first tell me what you got into,” she says to me.
“Arts at Melbourne.”
“Good. Okay. That makes me feel a bit better,” she says.
“So you didn’t get into commerce at Melbourne?” That was her first preference plan. Do a commerce degree, and then postgrad law.
“No.”
“Did you get into law?” Her second, third, and fourth preferences were undergrad law at other universities.
“No.”
“At any uni?”
“Nope.”
“How is that possible?” Lucy got great marks. Her mother bought her a monogrammed leather satchel as a graduation gift for doing so well.
Now Lucy’s face crumples a little, and she doesn’t meet my eye. She sits down on the couch and puts her head into her hands. “I don’t know how to say it,” she says.
The kettle pings then, and I leave her for a moment to make the tea and bring it back in. I put it on the coffee table in front of her.
“Careful, it’s hot,” I say, like she’s a little kid.
She still doesn’t raise her head from her hands. I take the cup back to the kitchen and put some cold water in, because I’m worried she’s too distracted to listen to what I’m saying and she’ll take a big mouthful and burn herself.
“Okay, I’m just going to say it,” she says, when I put the cup down a second time.
“Good.”
“On the count of three.”
“Okay.”
“Can you do the count?”
“One, two, three.”
“That was too fast. I wasn’t ready.”
“One … two … three.”
Lucy takes a huge breath in and lets it out. Her hands are shaking a little. “One more time.”
“Luce. Come on.” She’s starting to scare me.
“Just do it one more time.”
“One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand.”
“Okay. Okay. Here it is. I lied about my score.”
“You what?”
“You and Zach got such great marks, and I saw them, and I just … pretended I got that mark too.”
The morning our results were announced, the three of us had our usual group chat. Zach posted his mark first, then I wrote mine, and now that I think about it, there was definitely a pause before Lucy posted hers. At the time it had seemed miraculous and yet completely right that we all got marks so close. We all worked so hard. We were all brought up to be overachievers. We studied together. It made sense. But maybe it didn’t.
“Oh, Lucy.”
“My score isn’t even that bad! It’s fine. Average, maybe. It just isn’t amazing like yours. It wasn’t good enough for law. Or anything at Melbourne Uni. I don’t know why I lied. There’s something wrong with me, probably.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Yes, there is.”
“Lucy, did you get into anything?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Teaching.”
“Teaching?”
“Yes.”
“Since when did you want to be a teacher?”
“When I got my marks, I added teaching to my course preferences because … because it was something I might get into, something I might be good at. I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to be.”
“You always said you wanted to be a lawyer.”
“That’s what I said, yes.”
“But it wasn’t true?”
“I thought it was true. It’s what my parents want. They are so mad at me right now. But I don’t think I ever wanted to be a lawyer. Especially after I did work experience at that law firm. Do you know what a lawyer does all day? Reads really detailed, boring contracts, mostly, and sits in meetings and has conference calls. And they do this for, like, ten or twelve hours a day.”
“That does sound boring.” All office jobs sound boring, when you really think about it. I did work experience at the office of my local council, and people seemed to spend their time reading emails, complaining about emails, worrying about finding space in the fridge for their lunch, and getting excited about coffee.
“And you have to wear a suit. Suit jackets look ridiculous on me,” Lucy continues. Neither of us has ever worn a suit jacket, not that I know of, but I nod anyway.
“It’s because you’ve got very delicate shoulders.”
“I like little kids. And I’m small, so I won’t be intimidating to them.”
“That’s important,” I say. I have exactly zero idea about what is important. When I first started school, every teacher looked like a giant to me.
“Oh god, I have no idea what I’m doing,” Lucy says.
“I mean, we’re young. We should have no idea what we want to do.”
“Well, I’m going to study teaching now, so I hope I know.”
“You do. You know. I’m the one who doesn’t.”
I hug her, and she whimpers a little into my shoulder. I feel slightly dizzy, trying to comprehend the fact that Lucy, who never lies, lied about this. That she is going to be a teacher. I had already planned the gift I was going to give her when she graduated as a lawyer. I had planned our futures around the idea that she would have much more money than me. I was going to be the creative one, the one struggling for money and living in the spare room of her beautiful house, and she was going to be the rich, cutthroat corporate sellout who paid for our taxis and takeaway food, and was secretly jealous of my artistic struggles. Now the picture looks different. Now she’s going to inspire children and be deeply fulfilled, and I’ll just be directionless and unemployable.
“I’m psycho. You’ll never trust me again after this,” she says.
I can feel her shaking. I want to hug her forever. “I still trust you,” I say.
“You shouldn’t.”
“I’ll always, always, always trust you.”
“What if I keep lying? What if I can’t stop?”
“Then we’ll find a way to make you stop.”
“I haven’t told Zach.”
“We’ll tell him together.”
“No, no, I have to do it on my own.”
“We’ll make a plan of how to do it. Look, I’ll get a pen right now and we’ll write down what you can say. We’ll role-play it. You know I do a good Zach impression.”
“He’ll break up with me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’ll never break up with you. He loves you.”
“I knew I had to tell you both. I was going to do it on New Year’s Eve. But I couldn’t.”
“Lucy, it’s okay. It’s none of our business what score you got, anyway.”
“Yes, it is. I lied to you. That is unforgivable.”
“Lucy, everything is going to be fine. Drink your tea. You’ll feel better.”
Lucy holds the mug in her hands, half-heartedly raising it to her lips and pretending to drink, and I sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her, smiling encouragingly like I know how to fix everything.