Slopes and Ladders

"Don't worry. I haven't always been a ski bum," Kevin F. Fitzpatrick '83 said to me on the chair lift up Okemo Mountain, where my roommates and I had sallied for a day or two of our brief intersession. Kevin was charged with the 1:15 group lesson for Skill 8 last Friday at the Ludlow, Vt. ski site. I was one of two members of the group, the other being a somewhat mute 13 year-old who, like myself, was supposedly proficient in parallel turning and sought to bridge the chasm between the intermediate blue squares and the advanced black diamonds.

Today, Kevin lives year-round in the Green Mountain State with his second wife and their child. Upon graduation, Kevin had shipped off to Wall Street like so many of his money-driven go-go '80s peers. It wasn't his first choice, but he had outstanding student loans. His parents thought it proper that he pay them off, and get some of that work ethic into his mind to wear off the towered Ivy League mind-set he then had. He worked the Street for a few years, moving from firm to firm in the usual procession, making a good living while working his ass off.

Then the crash hit. October of 1987 meant that, along with quite a few of his Harvard peers, Kevin got booted from banking. The immense losses sustained by the banks resulted in huge staff cuts. What was one to do then with Street hiring in tatters and Harvard diploma in hand? Kevin's best option was a Connecticut financial planning company, and it was livable, but it wasn't close to what he wanted to be doing with his life. Now he's a Vermonter, ski instructing by day and acting, directing and producing by night, playing out an undergraduate passion for theater initiated in a Dunster House student production. He reveals that though he earns a fraction of what he once did, household management, his wife's income and New England pleasantries make up the difference.

Did Kevin cop out? Or did he happen by historical circumstance to get away from the rat race for his own benefit? Can we even ask these questions without being cliched?

Surely, the story I have told about Kevin doesn't incorporate his disappointments, namely his failure to attain the external achievement that the preprofessional student body both in the '80s and today (myself included) has intensely craved. At his upcoming 15th reunion, Kevin will surely not be blind to the inevitable comparison with others in his class, his roommates (one an arbitrageur), his acting buddies, the guy down the hall, the girl from section. Will it make a difference to him whether his life lacks the traditional accoutrements of American success? If it does, will that outweigh the benefits gained by living toward the end of contentment?

Obviously, there are more questions than answers here with regard to the notion of sacrificial success. But these are issues with which each of us must deal, being as we are the emerging core of the professional world. Whether one opts to go into business, law or medicine, the occupational sacrifice in terms of time and energy necessary to pursue careers in them is tremendous. Each of these professions is worthwhile in and of itself, from my perspective in addition to being externally rewarding. Yet they are also demanding in the extreme, from the initial application process for graduate school, to the professional training, to the daily dedication and seriousness of purpose required for a fruitful career.

Such anxiety about the future is the mark of a junior, his or her life not quite yet set, his or her outlook still ambitious. Exactly what is it that haunts the back of the mind about the professional status? Is it the qualified disdain offered by folks like Kevin Fitzpatrick, the fuck-it-all complexion of a contemplative existence? Why does the mundane existence lure the soul? Is it fear of failure or a desire for stability in the lack of motion? Can we ask for anything other than insecurity from a life-time of ladder-climbing? Is such future uncertainty, such unease of stomach and bother of mind, such agitated fuel for the self inherently bad? Or is the fact that it propels us to greater heights sufficient reasoning for the bother?

Joshua A. Kaufman's column appears on alternate Thursdays.