TFM
The weirdest thing keeps happening to me. I went to a party with all of my friends, and they’re all leaving, but I can’t seem to find the door. This party also kind of got old after the second or third year. Of course, the party I’m referring to is attending college, and unfortunately for me, I just got another beer.
Watching all of my friends and acquaintances graduate brings on mixed feelings for a guy in my spot. I’ve seen easily over 100 pictures of girls I know graduate from college from a standard scroll on social media, and yet I could count their poses on one hand. The best part of seeing graduation posts fill up your feed is finding out the guy who shouldn’t have graduated somehow pulled it off. I’m talking about the guy who would chug a water bottle the second he walked into your basement in high school so he could use it as a spitter. He went to college exclusively to party and everyone assumed he’d make it as far into his secondary education as LeBron James made it into The Catcher in the Rye, but four years later he actually did it.
What isn’t as cool about seeing all of these graduation posts is mentally preparing to go back and do it again next fall. Next semester is going to be the start of my fifth year. Now the idea of, “college is so fun, I’ll just stay for another year,” sounds pretty damn great to most, but I can tell you from my current experiences that it’s a pretty flawed thought process. Apparently not all of your friends will want to keep going to college bars to try scaring freshmen by accusing them of being underage. Apparently, there is a time to move on, and I’m going to be a little late.
I don’t really get to complain about needing an extra year of school. I made my bed, and then laid in it when I was supposed to be in Intro to Macroeconomics. I picked up a minor in joint-rolling that might not have been worth so much of my time in hindsight. I studied… the waiver wire in my fantasy league during a lot of my classes.
As I reflect on my first four years of college, I feel like I can offer some wisdom. Were all of these good decisions? Probably not. But the good news is I’m here to tell you that these things can make your college experience much harder. But they can also make it way more fun so do what you want, as long as your parents are paying for it.
