The final goodbye

I'm not very good with farewells.\nI have a tendency to get all teary-eyed and at a loss for words, and I become very touchy-feely with persons who don't necessarily care to be touched or felt. \nSo I refuse to look at graduation as a farewell. Instead, I will look at it as a gateway to something new. Like paying higher taxes, rent and health insurance. \nOK, something good has to happen once we graduate. College is not the end-all and be-all of life. Otherwise, we would graduate when we turned 80.\nBut it is all of the little quirks of college life that I will truly miss once I am gone from this place. (If you must, grab a tissue now, or hope the person next to you doesn't mind if you use their sleeve).\nI will miss Sunday oldies night, a staple for my roommate and I during freshman year. I'll also miss the time we lit a bag of microwave popcorn on fire and had to throw it out the window.\nI'll miss playing a game that my floormates and I invented called "wallyball."\nI'll miss staying up until sunrise the day after Little 5 for four straight years.\nI'll miss walking past the School of Music on a warm day and hearing the sounds of strings, winds, brass, pianos and operatic voices drifting out the windows.\nI'll miss being able to determine what brand of pizza someone has ordered on smell alone.\nI'll miss cheesy local advertising. Specifically, I'm talking about "Oh yeah, Avers!" and that awful Mother Bear's Pizza commercial where they make the lamest attempt at a rap song ever since Vanilla Ice muttered the words "Go ninja, go ninja, go!" \nI'll miss studying for tests on the seventh floor of the library.\nI'll miss procrastinating as I type a paper by watching late night fare such as "Sanford and Son," a Steven Seagal movie, those Time-Life infomercials for the "Best Hits of the 70s" CD collections ("it would cost you $1000 dollars to buy each of these individual albums"… or you could download them for free… wait, never mind) and Tony Robbins infomercials. \nI'll miss being surrounded by beautiful, young people. Next year when you're sitting across from some balding, middle-aged man, you'll be wishing you were back in math class just so you could sit next to that one girl one more time.\nI'll miss chanting A.J. Moye's name at basketball games. And watching people do mudslides at football tailgates.\nI'll miss walking around at night in a town where there is plenty to do and it is safe for me to do so. As long as I'm not drunk.\nI'll miss drinking on a fake ID. My secondary forms were a library card and casino rewards points card.\nI'll miss wondering where the people in People's Park go at night.\nI'll miss wondering why people choose to go home early during finals week. Don't they know that it is scientifically proven that home becomes boring after three days on average?\nI'll miss sleeping on the couch in the IDS newsroom. Or in the Ernie Pyle Hall auditorium.\nI'll miss writing this column and all of the feedback I get, whether it be good or bad.\nBut I couldn't think of any original material to end it with. So instead I will conclude by quoting the sage words of the renowned philosopher Rufus: Be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes.