by Leah Crisman, executive editor

It started like this:

[Older sister’s housemate, Kyle,* enters apartment kitchen]

Me: Hi Kyle! My sister told me so much about you! It’s nice to meet you finally! How’s it going? I made scones! Do you want some?

Kyle: No thanks. I don’t feel good. The rats at the lab I work at are sick, and I think they got me sick too.

Me: Uh, hope you feel better! [Reflexively places a protective arm over the scones]

Kyle: It’s nothing some broccoli can’t fix. [Proceeds to microwave a bag of frozen broccoli]

That conversation, in its entirety, was one of the only interactions I had with my sister’s housemate when I visited her during the summer for several weeks. I saw this kid (he’s not actually a kid; he’s about 22) maybe three times total. He would sleep until about four p.m., flit out of his room to microwave a Cup-O-Noodles, play video games until the wee hours of the morning, dash out at that point for more microwavable food items and return, exhausted, to hibernate some more.

He brought to mind a socially-challenged vampire: he was pale, nocturnal and lacking in communication skills. I would imagine him alone in his room with the harsh light from his computer screen reflecting off of his little headset, thinking to himself, I can quit any time.

I bring him up because I’d like to use him as an example of something that’s been bugging me lately (and it doesn’t hurt that there is about a 0.00000001% chance he’ll ever see this): namely, I’m seeing future Kyles everywhere.

Graduation is mere months away for a pretty hefty chunk of our school population, and I keep looking at people and wondering if some mysterious thing will happen to them in college that will turn them into just another Kyle, just another kid vegetating in front of a screen for days on end. It’s a legitimate worry, I swear. We are a country whose younger population is almost more comfortable with their little gadgets than with real people. What are we, future college students, The Future of America, to make of this?

I frankly don’t want to bother myself worrying about other people’s college lives, but I can’t help it. When I think of my graduating class going off to college, I’m not particularly worried about their grades tanking; I’m not worried that they’ll gain weight or have adjustment problems or any other of a long list of typical college issues. I am worried that they’ll stagnate with the pervasive allure of video games, television (or any other form of streaming media what-have-you) and all the expansive and mindless wonders of the Internet. It’s a little daunting.

This is a huge time-sink, but even more than that: it’s a huge money-sink. I know there’s a fair number of people already far gone from the real world without being anywhere near college-age, but at least school right now is free (well, for public schools like ours, it is) and requires us to show up on a regular basis.

College is so open-ended. Your parents might  pour all this money into your education, and some people don’t even bother getting out of bed in the morning. It’s such a huge waste of resources considering the ungodly high price of tuition: there are worthy students out there whose families cannot afford to send them to high-quality colleges, and it just kills me that someone would spoil all the work that went into getting to these institutions.

The utilitarian thing to do would be to skip the going-to-college part and give the tuition savings to a worthy scholarship fund, but I know I’m being a little unfair. Maybe the Kyle I met and all the other Kyles out there just need to grow up a little bit. Maybe he needs this slovenly period in his life to realize what matters to him–I don’t know.

I wish I could end with some call to action, some definitive answer about how America should get back on it’s feet blah, blah, blah. But really though, the only way to feel as strongly about this as I do is to witness Kyle making his Cup-O-Noodles at 4 a.m. It’s pretty sobering.

*Name has been changed, just in case the subject knows what “libel” means.