I wrote this piece almost two years ago at a pretty vulnerable and lonely time in my life. As a transfer student crammed into a corner room in Central lacking both the social skills and the desire to meet new people (in other words, a girlfriend at home.) I just wasn’t all that happy. As a result, I blamed UMass for all my problems. Sniffle, forlorn sigh. Anyway, here’s what came out:

I live in a dorm. I eat at a dining hall. I have a schedule of five classes that I get to when I can. I don’t read the hundreds of pages I’m assigned. I write papers and I take exams. I am a college student, but I don’t have a typical college life. Maybe it’s because I’m a transfer student, or because I go home to work every weekend. But I think the college life is what I want. This is my wish list.

I want a roommate. I want to spend more time in other people’s rooms than my own. I want a group of friends to eat with me so I don’t have to pretend to read the paper any more during dinner. I want to steal something random from a frat. I want that the only thing that tells me I’m in a frat is the sticky floor, keeping my entire world from spinning. I want to walk home from a party at 4 a.m. in 6-degree weather in a wife-beater and shorts and not feel cold.

I want to eat a semester’s worth of DC food without paying a dime. Actually, I want to eat a semester’s worth of food from Wings without paying a dime. Screw that, I just want the DC not to (expletive) up the Rice Crispy treats. I want the UMASS booty shorts to be mandatory.

I want a TA who speaks English better than my ’89 Honda Civic hatchback drives. I want a lifetime supply of Easy Mac. I want to protest against protestors in front of the Student Union. I want to complete a crossword puzzle from this newspaper. I want to be able to open a window in Herter when it’s 97 degrees outside.

I want to paint the “ASS of UMASS” on my rock-hard pecs at a basketball game to make me look creative…and drunk. I want a group of people to go with me to the Wu-Tang concert even if they can’t name all eight members or floss on my level right thurr. I want to know someone who can make me a ridiculously fake out-of-state ID with the holographic keys all over the place. Or at the very least I want to know someone with a thirty-two-year-old friend named Roberto whose eyebrows kinda look like mine so that I can use his old one. I want to be stranded outside a bar in downtown Boston at 2 A.M. with no money and wake up the following morning in my own bed with no memory of my return trip…and no pants.

I want to raise up, take my shirt off, twist it around my head, and spin it like a helicopter. I want to wear my second grade Spiderman pajamas to class on Halloween. I want to know who eats the vegan Native American Stew at the DC. I want to know what the hell Pelham is. I want to be the guy in the 8-foot inflatable Minute Man suit. And then I want to fart right before I get out of the suit as a gift for the next guy. I want to see a skateboarder, a bike-rider, and a dude on one of those stupid scooters crash into each other and fall on one of the swans next to our sparkling pond.

I want to walk in on my roommate doing it. I want my obnoxious cell phone ring (set to my favorite Avril Lavigne song) to disrupt my enormous Philosophy Lecture, just because. I want to ask the police if it’s ok to pet their attack dog Max during the Hobart riots.

Wait a second…I did do that.

I also plan on knocking off half the list before graduating this spring, and…(cue up sentimental Dawson’s Creek music)…I owe it all to my friends. So, to anyone who can identify with my pathetic former self, whether you’re single or spoken-for, hot or heinous, promiscuous or prude, drunk or designated driver, get yourself the hell out there. Sit next to the hot chick in Psych 100. Unscrew your closet door to make a beer pong table. Make an absolute ass out of yourself on a daily basis.

Over the next 4 years of your life, 4,000 new faces will be shoved into Amherst each fall for your own personal use and exploitation. Even though they’ll have 4,000 different personalities, insecurities, and annoying tendencies among them, we all have one thing in common: that we want to live, and deserve to live, a college life.