Imagine that you are sitting in a steamy auditorium, watching one of those award ceremonies that simply will not end. An award recipient trudges onstage to receive a lifetime achievement award and begins to read a 10-page dissertation describing, in detail, his life story.
There's just one problem: nobody in the audience cares. Everyone is hot and sweaty, and all they want is for Mr. Award Face to stop talking so that they can all go home and eat their leftover mashed potatoes and watch the news.
Right now, I feel just like Mr. Award Face. Not because my face resembles a lifetime achievement award, but because I have been put in a situation where I'm supposed to sum up the last four years of my life, at a moment in time when both my audience and myself are eager to move onward.
But what, I ponder, are we moving towards? Cubicles, coffee and cardiac arrest? I don't know about you, but I want to relive this "college" phenomenon as many times as I can before I get stuck writing TPS reports for Bill Lumbergh.
For the past four years, the word "college" has completely defined my life. By telling someone that I was a college student, I would convey a comprehensive sketch of my life - that I was young adult in search of a career, and that I was in an uncontrollable stage of experimentation where I would try anything once. One incident involving a keg, a flamethrower, a Tibetan yak and the rain dance comes to mind.
Regardless, this form of expression no longer applies. I mean, the next time a friend asks, "How's life treatin' ya?," I will not longer be able to respond, "College, man, college" and bask in that moment of complete understanding between us.
Now that it's over, I'll have to admit that college has changed me as a person. When I first came to Tufts, I was young, immature and cowardly. I would flee in terror from other humans. Now I am old and wise, and I turn into the Incredible Hulk when angered.
But honestly, college has been a time of rapid development for me, and my views of the world have changed dramatically. All of a sudden, I care who is running this country. When I stumble upon something that I don't understand, I want to figure out how it works. I want to grow, I want to improve, and I want to conquer the unknown. Look at this - I've even gained an appreciation for writing entire paragraphs without being lame and sarcastic. Breast. Damn.
I have a newfound appreciation for this thirst for knowledge. I now realize that the journey for knowledge is one of the pleasures of life, and it will continue to be so long as I put my pants on each morning. Well, Jeff, does this mean that when you finally end this expedition for awareness of yours that you will no longer be wearing pants? You have my word.
Of all the things that I've learned in college, I have to say that the most important is the fact that as I learn, my personal views of the world are constantly in a state of flux. It seems like just yesterday I thought that broccoli was the devil incarnate, and that mixing one percent and two percent milk would cause a violent explosion. Now I know that at least one of these isn't true. I wake up each morning expecting to learn more truths such as these.
You may think that it's too late for advice, but hey, who cares what you think? My advice to both graduates and incoming students is to expose yourself to as many different things as you can.
One of the most rewarding aspects of my college career has been writing this column, which I decided to try out on a whim. Who knows what my second semester of senior year would have been like if I hadn't sent in those three sample articles to the Daily? ("I hate John Mayer," "I hate names," and "Can't Stand It," for those scoring at home.) I guarantee that it would not have been as enjoyable.
In college, you are forced to do a lot of things that you don't enjoy, but you are also free to find any number of things that you do. It is these experiences that will shape your future. Find something that you love, that you could see yourself being in 10 years, and have at it.
If I had found a university where I could have majored in Spiderman, then I would have been first in line to sign up. Well, you know what they say, if you can't become a superhero, why not become a mechanical engineer? I think someone said that.
In closing, I would like to say that I am grateful for every experience that I've had here at Tufts. Many of these I'm sure I will never forget - my struggles on the baseball field, the faces of friends, and heck, even sitting in front of my computer wrestling with each sentence of these columns.
Recently, I've been wondering what I would try to accomplish if I had the opportunity to relive these past four years. While what I would do is a story for another day, the simple fact that there were stones left unturned is proof to me that you can never accomplish too much the first time around.
