Many people will tell you, “College is the best four years of your life.” Do not listen to these people. Kick them. Challenge them to a duel. Tell them to stop propagating that B.S.
Because that is what it is: B.S. Not because college is not fantastic. Not because some of your most vivid memories will not be made in this place.
In “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” actress Julia Roberts finally comes to terms with her feelings about good-looking (that’s what they tell me, at least) Dermot Mulroney: The whole time, she was always hardcore and wanted to do her own thing and be in control, but she finally realized that it is quite all right to “need somebody.”
I think that there are two things you can do when you are out of ideas. One is to say nothing. Mumble. Lightly address your companion. The other is to mindlessly destroy what is around you. We have moved, as a world, from the second to the first option. There is a column, presumably from an old Student Life, pasted on the inside of the KWUR bathroom stall, snarkily criticizing the cool, deconstructionist, exclusivist atmosphere of indie, experimental and avant-garde music.
To The Class of 2008: It would be in everybody’s best interest if Chancellor Wrighton were informed that the vice presidential debate is not, in fact, the same day as our Commencement and that we can reschedule Chris Matthews for the vice presidential debates in the fall.
Turns out, in the 1960s, students seized a university called Sorbonne in France and demanded a democratization of the then-dictatorial classroom. They asked for a say in the administration of the university and hoped to address other societal problems that they thought would be solved by their anarchical energy, undirected but extremely powerful, toward the promotion of a leaderless change.
Incongruity. The spice of life.
Like the Saturday night Alabama-Mississippi State game for the SEC quarterfinals heading into March Madness. Severe weather strikes Atlanta, and fragments of the arena’s roof start falling down onto the basketball court. Kind of sad that everyone wants to watch this thing to see an Atlanta tornado blow down the Georgia Dome and kill 20,000 people.
When I was walking around in the Galleria just the other evening, taking weird pictures of doors for my photography class, a police officer (the kind they have in malls) came up to me. He was tall, but also pretty young. Not a terribly imposing guy. “S’cuse me, sir,” he said.
We have this thing, the people I live with and myself, and it’s about not masturbating. It’s this contest, consecrated a Saturday ago at 10 in the evening, where we put in five dollars, and the last man standing gets the 25 bucks. It’s on the honor system, of course.
Overcommit yourself. That’s my advice.” Those were the first two lines of my advice to incoming freshmen this year in the Orientation issue of Student Life. What the hell was I thinking?
The grass is always greener on the other side. I understand this. There is a lot to be said both for signing yourself up for a lot of things and for keeping it as low-key as possible.
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