I find myself here at this end of days thinking more and more about the start of my UMass experience. I’m thinking back to my days as a confused and excited freshman, long before every street and brick-built campus building seemed to hold a story, and with that, all the tiny moments of the random people and events that made each day here so different. And I find myself thinking if this was bound to happen? Was this the inexorable result of living in a confined space for four of the formative years of my life, or was it perhaps a result of something I did?

In truth I’ve done a lot of things on this campus. I’ve become what college enrollment officers would like to refer to as “involved” per se. But even that took a full year of living as a ‘swestie’ that was close enough in Cance to walk to Berkshire in my pajamas to fully shake.

But I guess all the good stuff started when I founded a radio show on WMUA with my good friend Charles Felder. It’s called “Sweet Baby Lou & The Reverends of Funk.” Some of you may have heard it, played on it with your band, listened to it while your friend in a band was on it or followed our website. And for that I can’t thank you enough.

Around the same time I started writing for the Collegian. My first article was about country music. Since then, the Collegian has taken me everywhere from backstage at the 2009 Spring Concert, to the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Tennessee, and the Conservative Political Action Campaign in Washington D.C. And I have written a lot of other random places in between.

Toward the end of 2008, I campaigned for Barack Obama and ended up in the University Democrats. The night before the 2008 Election, I spent 45 minutes on the phone with a doctor from Missoula, Montana who had every reason to vote for John McCain and most likely did. I even spent a semester on the streets of Manhattan interning for MTV. I could go on and on, but the point, I suppose, is that I owe these unique experiences to this campus, and the people I’ve met here without which I would not have been able to do all the things that I did.

But looking around these days and traveling the rounds of the Student Union, I notice hundreds of little nooks and rooms that I have ignored these past four years. Each of them looks lived in, like they could be anyone’s home away from home. You’ve seen them: the random doors that open up places where people get involved, make friends and kill time. I’ve never been to the Craft Center. But I imagine other people haven’t been to the Collegian, either. This is the real UMass to me, and one that I can’t sing the praises of enough. Yeah we’ve got the stupid Minuteman mascot, and we have to deal with those ad campaigns that try to paint us as responsible teetotalers. But I couldn’t think of a better place to spend one’s time than in one of these places. I imagine that everyone has one, and there are thousands to stumble upon. I found mine, and it was the Collegian.

The Collegian is perhaps best described as the nicotine-addled, brain-trust of the UMass campus. And yeah, we report the news, and put out a paper. But we do a whole lot of other things, too. And I don’t think you could find a more interesting, diverse group of eccentrics on campus. I mean this as an utmost compliment. But that’s just what it was for me. A place to put my things, kill time, shoot the shit or whatever between classes, all while learning the valuable skills of journalism and mostly just putting off whatever else wasn’t more contingent upon present action.

And now what? What of this great present that stretches before us graduates? I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure that’s the point, a sort of blessing and curse that comes from being on the precipice of realizing one’s dreams. I will now leave you with a quote that will be much more worthwhile than reading this column: “The Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can, pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way, where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.”