Lately I've been taking longer, hotter showers. These are the type of showers that turn your skin a Bob Barker-esque shade of burnt sienna, and I love every second of it.
While I'm in there, I like to think about life and the people I pass in the street who might know bits and pieces about me, even though I've never seen them before. I am strangely appreciative because if my column was anything, it was a chance for me to let people into my world and hopefully keep them entertained for a few minutes.
In a frighteningly small amount of time, I'll no longer be a college student, instead just a castaway lost amidst a sea of expectations. It's a feeling prompting a lot of self-searching, and it made me ask: What does this degree tell me about myself that I don't already know?
Over the course of my college career I've done a lot, but it wasn't nearly all I wanted to learn or accomplish. I still have pronunciation issues with Cieslewicz and Oregon, and I haven't figured out who writes the word ""trill"" all over everything in Madison.
I still don't eat enough vegetables.
Freshman year I vomited during an early Friday math exam. Given the circumstances, my B on that exam still ranks as one of my proudest accomplishments.
On Halloween junior year, I failed horribly in a game of ""Edward Forty Hands."" The incident taught me to stay optimistic—After all, there's no use crying over spilt malt liquor.
Sadly, the inconvenient price of higher education means I don't have time to do everything, and now I enter a world where there are no study days, no half-grade penalties for late assignments and you'll clap for months without getting any credit.
The point is, I'll probably spend the rest of my life trying to get to the point where I can do exactly what I do right now—staying up absurdly late doing absurd things, sprawling across Bascom Hill and having a few people gently caress my ego each week.
""You can write about anything,"" my editors told me in my first meeting about this column. There's nothing worse than feeling unprepared, and I couldn't have felt worse.
It reminded me of when I started writing for The Daily Cardinal one year earlier. I was terrified by the prospect of thousands of people reading my news stories. In lecture the day my first story was published, I watched several people skim over it on their way to the crossword. It helped ease my fears to know I was merely the fodder for bored lecture attendees, not critical literary scholars. It also helps when you write stories about Babcock ice cream.
Sure, I won't be telling all the foolish things I did to my grandkids, but I'm pretty certain I'll regret the things I didn't do more than those I did. There is no other chance to jump in a lake at 3 a.m. or set off fireworks into abandoned frat houses.
Some might call that escapism or immaturity. And sure, perhaps we're all a little immature in our actions at this point in our lives, but that's the whole purpose of these four years.
Maybe college is an escape, but so are long, hot showers and everything else worth savoring in life.
