![\"College](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/college_cashiers_receipts.860907.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a>College Cashiers Receipts, 1986<\/p><\/div> This appears to be the oldest receipt in my collection. From September, 1986, this receipt for $1128.34 records payment for an entry fee of some sort for college. I do not specifically recall this fee, or the occasion of writing a check in this amount, but it is probably the Matriculation Deposit. I remember the Matriculation Deposit because I thought “Matriculation” was an unusual and provocative word. It sounded vaguely risqué to me, despite its innocuous meaning.<\/p>\n
Much of my early college experiences have suffocated under the phlegm of mental constipation, as well as a concerted effort on my part to forget about that period of my life. College was, from as early as I remember being aware of it in grade school, just something I had to get out of the way. That is not to say that I loathed the experience or the place. Far from it. The place was fine, and many good times were had, some not-so-good times as well but I would think that is typical enough. Upon completion I just wanted to put this experience of college in the past, as if to prove that I was self-sufficient enough to have never even needed it.<\/p>\n
This receipt, then, documents the beginning of that period, this 4-year stretch of holding my breath before real life began.<\/p>\n
I was uneasy and gawky through most of college. My protracted adolescence fed into mildly anti-social behaviors, mental depression, and was further extended by religious ambivalence.<\/p>\n
I attended private Catholic schools for most of my youth. In those places religious observation, as casual as it may have seemed, was a part of the scheduled routine. Outside of that context I tried to find my way into similar environments of church and social structure, but it never worked. Church, I discovered, intimidated me. Prior to college my encounters with church services were more or less mandatory, but when the onus was on me to participate in a culturally looser church setting I think I simply did not fit in.<\/p>\n
I re-discovered this fear again when I moved to New York 4 years later. The cathedrals here are magnificent, so glorious in their arches and skyward aspirations that I feel like nothing<\/i> in their midst. The environment of church in this town seems strangely competitive and, separately, surreal. There is so much exposure to religion in this town, while I would rather keep my spiritual tics between myself and the confessional. In some abstract fashion I imagine a purity of religious purpose which erases a need for physical structures and social rituals.<\/p>\n
Whatever the case, my attempts at continuing involvement in church and faith all fell by the wayside in college. I have not thought about this for a long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This appears to be the oldest receipt in my collection. From September, 1986, this receipt for $1128.34 records payment for an entry fee of some sort for college. I do not specifically recall this fee, or the occasion of writing a check in this amount, but it is probably the Matriculation Deposit. I remember the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-receipts","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/college_cashiers_receipts.860907-416x1024-1.jpg?fit=416%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-ut","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}