Graduating and the Great Beyond...
I think I still have a few loyal readers of this blog. Thanks guys, for caring enough to check back periodically and see me give proof that higher education does not a perfect writer make. We've laughed, we've cried - OK, maybe I was the only one doing those things, but you got to read about me doing them, and the fact that you did counts for something.
College is over now. Today I went to my big, school-wide graduation ceremony first and then made my family follow me from Trask Colliseaum over to Kenan Auditorium where my Film Studies departmental graduation was held. It was a exactly what I was expecting - but, curiously, it was totally different from anything I'd experienced before. I'm not talking about a new experience in the same way as your first frozen chocolate banana or the first time you wrapped your face in plaster of paris to make a life-cast of your head for special effects modeling purposes (what, you guys never did that???). It's more like making a memory - where you know exactly what it's going to feel like when you play it back in your head later, but you know while you're in the middle of it that it really feels very little like that memory upon which you'll rely. I'm probably not making much sense. I guess I felt something impress upon me but the effects of that impression are yet to be seen. In much the same way, the effect of college on the whole is yet to be seen, but I suppose it will make itself apparent in the coming years.
In any case, I'm now a former student of the University of North Carolina Wilmington and to sum the whole thing up, it was a really good time. I dealt with zoo creatures, learned how to be a student for the first time, made friends, lost friends, fell in love, was hurt by love, hung out with the wrong people on occasion but hung out with the right ones far more often. I tried new things and relied on old, sturdy foundations. I ate far too much ramen, hauled tons of dirty clothes around to the wash, flirted with strangers, felt independent, and above all, learned. I learned a whole, whole lot - twice as much outside of the classroom as in, but still a heck of a lot more in them than I did in the 13 years prior.
Sound familiar? It should. Maybe you didn't go to college, or maybe you did, but your ate nutritious food or didn't have to deal with your roommates terrarium full of creatures. Those are just details. My college story has no dramatic twist, heroic score, or blockbuster appeal - but it does have a spectacular ending. It's an ending where I've come to realize that we're all connected in a lot of ways. We all have the same experiences, more or less, and that's not at all a bad thing. I came here expecting the most unique four years in the history of undergraduate careers, and I'm leaving with the knowledge that it doesn't often end up the way we imagined it would. I'm thankful for that. At the risk of sounding cheesier that the dairy drawer of my fridge (which is very cheesy, indeed) this has been a beautifully typical coming of age story, and it's just as much yours as it is mine.
...
Now for the next big thing.
I'll probably post on here one more time with the address of a new site where some of my stuff can be found. I may or may not start up a new blog. To anyone who eventually reads this post, thanks for stopping in. I'll leave all the old posts up and available in the archives menu on the right as long as blogger will allow. To anyone who cares, it has been good for me to write, and I appreciate the comments and your reading my banter. God bless you all.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (grammatically correct sentence consisting of only one word. Look it up. I learned it in college)
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Friday, May 09, 2008
FarewellmingSloan
Not quite what I expected...
I was planning on having a ridiculous, multi-paged send-off for this blog since it will be defunct as of Sunday, but with the hectic schedule that I've had, and graduation happening and everything, it's been next to impossible to find time to sit down and write a novel about WilmingSloan and all of college. Instead, I'll write a sad (bittersweet) little story about something that just happened to me that I think sums up my sentiments toward leaving pretty well. If you want ridiculous, light-heartedness - I'll try to bring it along to my final post after Graduation. I've not been in the cheeriest moods as of late because all of my non-graduating friends (including my roommates) have all booked it out of town so I'm left sitting here alone, waiting for my parents.
So I was out on a date the other night and and I was pulling in to drop her off when I came upon a girl being pushed around in a shopping cart. It just so happens that this girl in the shopping cart was a friend of ours, one who lived in Schwartz, my old dorm, on the third floor. I had talked to her about visiting before I graduated just for old times sake, and so the timing was just too perfect, she let us in.
I had forgotten about the whole necessity of signing your guests in at the desk. What a hassle. While that was going on I just looked around at everything, it was so weird. It was like I had entered a time capsule and I was back in my sophomore year. Everything looked the same (sans banana in the elevator ceiling grate) and the kids up stairs in the common room were even watching Star Wars on the big TV - something I'm pretty sure happened a good deal when I was there. Oh! The countless hours of television I watched and Halo 2 I played on that TV back in the day.
I went back to 314 and just stood there. The door was locked because the kid living there had moved out already. I wanted to open it pretty badly - and find Brett Roach on the other side eating a can of peanuts or standing on his computer chair with a banana in his hand. I even wanted to hear the squeaking of those stinking annoying rats of his. If not Roach, I wanted Devin Dimattia to be there, sitting at his desk with his giant iPod shuffle headphones next to him, reading some obscure music blog that told him all of the latest info on random stuff that no one else cared about. I went to the water fountain down the hall and laughed at the sign the current RA had posted above it "If the fountain is clogged it is because some of you are using it to brush your teeth in. Stop this or you will be fined." Though worded a little differently, this is the same sign that Bob had over it when I was there. I walked past the mysteriously loud buzzing utility closet at the end of the hall and through the stairwell to the girls pod where I spent so much time with my friends. Laura and Lauren's room, Amelia and Lindsay's room, Caroline and Amanda's room - going back there almost affected me more than my own pod. I miss these kids, and whereas they were simply on the other side of the stairwell, now I'll likely never see them again.
The worst was when I went back into the common room. There my friend showed me where they had hung the canvas that the 05-06 residents had painted their names on. She pointed my name out to me before I could find it, painted in green and surrounded in red. Everywhere else were the names of distant memories, some fond and others not. Right next to mine, of course, was the purple paint of Caroline's signature. Then I remembered exactly where we were sitting when we painted it - at the corner of the common room. I messed up on mine and had to cover it up with the red paint, then she picked her favorite color and squashed her name in next to mine, in spite of the lack of room around it.
I miss my first two years at college because they were fun. I never worried about the future in those years, it was all about enjoying what I had and getting through the work in front of me. I had a lot of good friends and even more good memories with them. Schwartz, the building, represents that time for me. My college career can easily be split into two separate experiences - underclassman and upperclassman - both with a completely different flavor. My later experiences have been pretty great too, just very different. Going to Schwartz allowed me to visit some of the underclassman experiences that I had carefully pushed under the rug, and unearthing them was good for me.
You always hear old-timers talk about wishing they could go back for just one week, or even one day. I can sympathize, so I guess that makes me an old-timer. It would be nice to lay awake at night and have a philosophical discussion with Roach - or watch an old chick flick with the girls (though I hated it then), even to read the stupid poetry and writing on the bathroom stalls again and just KNOW that I was still there - that I still had time to be young and in college and soak up the experience. It would be nice.
But what I have is nice. And what I'll have in a year will be nice too, God willing. I will miss this campus so much, but what I really miss has long-since left me - transferred out to other schools, graduated and moved-on, or simply faded away in an apartment on the other side of town. I miss those people and the times we had together. I miss being a college kid.
...
But I'll get over it.
I was planning on having a ridiculous, multi-paged send-off for this blog since it will be defunct as of Sunday, but with the hectic schedule that I've had, and graduation happening and everything, it's been next to impossible to find time to sit down and write a novel about WilmingSloan and all of college. Instead, I'll write a sad (bittersweet) little story about something that just happened to me that I think sums up my sentiments toward leaving pretty well. If you want ridiculous, light-heartedness - I'll try to bring it along to my final post after Graduation. I've not been in the cheeriest moods as of late because all of my non-graduating friends (including my roommates) have all booked it out of town so I'm left sitting here alone, waiting for my parents.
So I was out on a date the other night and and I was pulling in to drop her off when I came upon a girl being pushed around in a shopping cart. It just so happens that this girl in the shopping cart was a friend of ours, one who lived in Schwartz, my old dorm, on the third floor. I had talked to her about visiting before I graduated just for old times sake, and so the timing was just too perfect, she let us in.
I had forgotten about the whole necessity of signing your guests in at the desk. What a hassle. While that was going on I just looked around at everything, it was so weird. It was like I had entered a time capsule and I was back in my sophomore year. Everything looked the same (sans banana in the elevator ceiling grate) and the kids up stairs in the common room were even watching Star Wars on the big TV - something I'm pretty sure happened a good deal when I was there. Oh! The countless hours of television I watched and Halo 2 I played on that TV back in the day.
I went back to 314 and just stood there. The door was locked because the kid living there had moved out already. I wanted to open it pretty badly - and find Brett Roach on the other side eating a can of peanuts or standing on his computer chair with a banana in his hand. I even wanted to hear the squeaking of those stinking annoying rats of his. If not Roach, I wanted Devin Dimattia to be there, sitting at his desk with his giant iPod shuffle headphones next to him, reading some obscure music blog that told him all of the latest info on random stuff that no one else cared about. I went to the water fountain down the hall and laughed at the sign the current RA had posted above it "If the fountain is clogged it is because some of you are using it to brush your teeth in. Stop this or you will be fined." Though worded a little differently, this is the same sign that Bob had over it when I was there. I walked past the mysteriously loud buzzing utility closet at the end of the hall and through the stairwell to the girls pod where I spent so much time with my friends. Laura and Lauren's room, Amelia and Lindsay's room, Caroline and Amanda's room - going back there almost affected me more than my own pod. I miss these kids, and whereas they were simply on the other side of the stairwell, now I'll likely never see them again.
The worst was when I went back into the common room. There my friend showed me where they had hung the canvas that the 05-06 residents had painted their names on. She pointed my name out to me before I could find it, painted in green and surrounded in red. Everywhere else were the names of distant memories, some fond and others not. Right next to mine, of course, was the purple paint of Caroline's signature. Then I remembered exactly where we were sitting when we painted it - at the corner of the common room. I messed up on mine and had to cover it up with the red paint, then she picked her favorite color and squashed her name in next to mine, in spite of the lack of room around it.
I miss my first two years at college because they were fun. I never worried about the future in those years, it was all about enjoying what I had and getting through the work in front of me. I had a lot of good friends and even more good memories with them. Schwartz, the building, represents that time for me. My college career can easily be split into two separate experiences - underclassman and upperclassman - both with a completely different flavor. My later experiences have been pretty great too, just very different. Going to Schwartz allowed me to visit some of the underclassman experiences that I had carefully pushed under the rug, and unearthing them was good for me.
You always hear old-timers talk about wishing they could go back for just one week, or even one day. I can sympathize, so I guess that makes me an old-timer. It would be nice to lay awake at night and have a philosophical discussion with Roach - or watch an old chick flick with the girls (though I hated it then), even to read the stupid poetry and writing on the bathroom stalls again and just KNOW that I was still there - that I still had time to be young and in college and soak up the experience. It would be nice.
But what I have is nice. And what I'll have in a year will be nice too, God willing. I will miss this campus so much, but what I really miss has long-since left me - transferred out to other schools, graduated and moved-on, or simply faded away in an apartment on the other side of town. I miss those people and the times we had together. I miss being a college kid.
...
But I'll get over it.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Returning From the Point of No Return
How Grand Theft Auto Affected me Positively
About a week ago, and quite against my better moral judgement, I purchased for my xbox 360 a game that strikes fear in the hearts of conservative parents everywhere, Grand Theft Auto IV. I think it's horrible that any parent would help their kid get a hold of a game that has some of the mature content that is in this one, but being an adult myself, and being one that enjoys high-speed car chases and shooting automatic weaponry in a virtual New York City, I was able to overcome my own moral fear and enjoy playing it.
What I wasn't expecting, was the positive impact it would have on my life - specifically, my social life. I've never been good about keeping in touch with people, just ask any of my friends (the few that are left after my horrible social skills killed everything). I've started playing this game, though, and the way it works it that you have to build up relationships with certain characters in order to get special benefits from them (free taxi, reduced price guns and ammo, etc). This means answering text messages and phone calls and hanging out with people when they want to hang out.
After ignoring some of the characters, and subsequently watching them drop out of my virtual-life, it got me thinking about how miserable I am at keeping in touch with friends in my real one. In just the past week I have made sure to keep in touch with everyone that I mean to keep in touch with and so far, it seems to be working.
So to all those news columnists that love to trump the evils of the GTA franchise, let me just say, "HA!" For responsible adults that can handle playing the game and its mature content, there can even be a good lesson or two in there.
Steak is delicious. Steak and cheese-even more delicious.
About a week ago, and quite against my better moral judgement, I purchased for my xbox 360 a game that strikes fear in the hearts of conservative parents everywhere, Grand Theft Auto IV. I think it's horrible that any parent would help their kid get a hold of a game that has some of the mature content that is in this one, but being an adult myself, and being one that enjoys high-speed car chases and shooting automatic weaponry in a virtual New York City, I was able to overcome my own moral fear and enjoy playing it.
What I wasn't expecting, was the positive impact it would have on my life - specifically, my social life. I've never been good about keeping in touch with people, just ask any of my friends (the few that are left after my horrible social skills killed everything). I've started playing this game, though, and the way it works it that you have to build up relationships with certain characters in order to get special benefits from them (free taxi, reduced price guns and ammo, etc). This means answering text messages and phone calls and hanging out with people when they want to hang out.
After ignoring some of the characters, and subsequently watching them drop out of my virtual-life, it got me thinking about how miserable I am at keeping in touch with friends in my real one. In just the past week I have made sure to keep in touch with everyone that I mean to keep in touch with and so far, it seems to be working.
So to all those news columnists that love to trump the evils of the GTA franchise, let me just say, "HA!" For responsible adults that can handle playing the game and its mature content, there can even be a good lesson or two in there.
Steak is delicious. Steak and cheese-even more delicious.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
