Getting it on till the break of dawn (with homework)

I couldn’t make myself get out of the chair.
My final was finished, I had already turned in my final paper, and I’d managed to nail an essay question about a book that I didn’t read or attend the lecture on.
But I still couldn’t leave the room. It was the last deadline, test, and class of my college career and I wasn’t ready for it to be over.
So I sat in my desk thinking back over the roughly 17 years I’ve been waking up everyday and going to school.

I thought back to my elementary school spelling tests when I wrote down each word as fast as I could for fear that I’d somehow forget the spelling if I took a second to think. I remembered the pressure I felt sitting down to take the ACT, scared that I wouldn’t score high enough to stick out amongst thousands of graduating seniors. I even smiled when I remembered my first honors calculus test my freshman year of college and how I looked at the first page and literally wondered if it was written in a foreign language before realizing that –cos(tanx)/siny+1 really just meant “Yeah, you’re fucked” in academia.
As I looked at all my other classmates scribbling away and occasionally flexing their sore hands in utter silence, I couldn’t help but remember all the finals I’d taken over the last five years and the connection I felt in all of them with my classmates who were just trying to get by like me.
Yeah, I’m a nostalgic guy, so deal with it.
Finally, after about 15 minutes, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer with out getting misty-eyed, so I rose, put my paper on the desk, and walked out of the classroom one last night.
I’m not somebody who really buys into the destiny crap, but I did appreciate that I took my final college test in the same room and building where I took my first college test. As I left the building, and glanced at the ivy-covered walls of the English building, I decided to take the long route to my car.
One of my favorite parts of going to the U of N is walking through the beautiful campus to and from class. I decided to make a loop around the old quad before strolling under the trees that cover the library walkway and finally past the pines that stand on the hill between the Fine Arts Building and the J School.
I never move around campus at anything that could be considered much more than a mosey anyway, but I went especially slow this time, enjoying my personal favorite parts of campus on one final relaxed walk after class.
After all this reflection, I went to the batting cages with Dave before going home to grab a quick nap.
To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to do. I felt like I should try to make some grand plan in hopes of having some big adventure to cap such a huge event.
But I just didn’t have it in me. I’m still not sure how I feel about leaving school. And, at the moment, I’m more sad than anything about leaving my friends and this weird life where we learn to survive together in an amazing state of quasi-adulthood.
All I know is that while my last semester sucked nuts of the donkey variety, my last couple days went the right way.
I had to pull an all-nighter to get ready for the class, so I spent the night at the Joe with Scott and Dave before heading to the Gold and Silver for a sunrise breakfast. I couldn’t have ended my academic career in a more fitting way (I won’t say that I’m done being a student because I keep hearing all this crap about life being a classroom).
Oh, and I don’t think a student has ever had a more satisfying end to their careers than I did.
The all-nighter, the last one in an extremely long line, was mostly spent writing a 13-page essay.
What about, you ask?
Porn.
That’s right, my final contribution to this fine institution was a 13-page opus about the evils of high definition pornography.
I used clitoris and Jesus in the same sentence, and I also got to use vagina, vein tributary, and sport-humping.
I’m not sure how I feel about leaving, but I’m damn sure I couldn’t have picked a more perfect way to go.