T he trees are breeding, the tour groups are in full swarm and the academic end times are upon us. I don’t have my cap and gown yet, but I already feel that sickly mix of dread and apathy that means our time has come. And sure enough, there’s less than a month until roughly a quarter of us ride off in the hellish chariot of post-graduate life, pulled by a hairy mutant beast out of Revelations and sponsored by Career Services.
But while I’m basking and baking in my own apathy, twiddling my thumbs as I await the four horsemen of the collegiate apocalypse (senioritis, last goodbyes, unemployment and alcohol abuse), I figured I’d take stock of my four years here and see how things are looking (generally not well is the answer).
After cleaning up trash, vacuuming under everything and bleaching a couple of surfaces, I think I managed to make something useful out of the greasy clutter that constitutes my four most recent years of existence. Here’s a couple of life lessons I’ve managed to scrounge up (and when I say “scrounge,” I really mean “scrounge”):
1. “Hammocking is not permitted in the Arboretum” is something people will tell you from time to time, but I put it in quotes just now because do it anyway . Nature was meant to be (respectfully) lived in, not jealously guarded like a Lego model of the Death Star.
2. Burritos are tasty but gross to eat, grosser to throw and grossest to have thrown at you. But still tasty.
3. Once you’ve died of deep, soul-killing embarrassment at least once, you’re pretty much immortal as far as dignity is concerned. All it took for me was a motley crew of cops and librarians gawking at me in the UL at four in the morning as I held a cardiac event recorder up to the phone for about five minutes and let it loudly beep, deedle and whirr its signals through the mouthpiece like a cyborg E.T. quite literally phoning home (We’ve all been there before).
Now I roam the earth like an untouchable spirit, numbly making a fool out of myself like Hamlet’s dad or Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense,” freely expressing myself and making myself felt and heard, but largely unconcerned with how people might judge me or my actions. So just be yourself, you know?
4. Learning can be like, fun and stuff.
5. There’s no limit to how many library books you can check out! My personal record is 70. (“Overdue fees” get their own column in my monthly budget.)
