I’m not going. I’m not going!
I was like this right before high school graduation too. Don’t send me out into that big dumb world. Don’t do it! There is nothing out there I can’t get here, standing still, marinating in my own juices, achieving total lethargy.
OK, it’s true, I’m not really graduating yet, just leaving and never coming back, not for all the money in the world. And yes, I have been miserable here more often than I’ve been happy. But that might have something to do with me, as a person, truly enjoying a good wallow.
That’s not to say that this experience hasn’t been worth it. I edited a daily paper. I got the word “poop” banned from that paper. I performed bad comedy on live television. I drove buses. I mocked strangers and made friends and fell in love. I saw more basements and bathrooms of random houses than the average realtor. One summer I stole hats wherever I went – three baseball caps, a sombrero and a Viking helmet. But I don’t have those hats anymore.
Really, all I have to show for my time here at the University of Massachusetts is a man, a writing portfolio and a Pokémon tattoo.
What more can a girl ask for from her college experience?
The big things in my life that forced me to grow and change over the past four years, and there have been some doozies, had nothing to do with school. This University has simply been a filter for life, either helping or massively hindering the path life forced on me anyway. But I can’t complain, not that much. Or at least, I won’t, not to you, not now. Because, despite it all, I don’t feel ready to go.
To those, both faculty and friends, who were there for me through my flakiness and melancholia: you are saints from a better world than this.
To everyone else: may you have many more New England winters like this one past, that are, in fact, not New England winters at all.
Time to let go. Goodbye, you zoo of strange and terrible little creatures. I’m flying south.
Victoria Knobloch was the Opinion/Editorial editor. She can be reached at [email protected].
