Ah boy, another year of school is upon us. It seems like only yesterday that I was out, basking in the glory of summer. Now, I don’t know what basking in the glory of summer involves for you, but for me it means staying locked up nicely in my home soaking in the air condition.Yup, that’s summer to me. None of that fancy pantsy sun shine and fresh air for me. Not if I can help it anyway.
Summer is a fantastic season, I’m sure that there are few who would disagree with me. Maybe you would if your kid happens to be a royal pain in the tushy, though outside of that— summer rules.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end and we have reached the end of summer, which means only one thing— more school, more books, more teacher’s dirty looks.
Well, that last part is true if you’re attempting to teach me math or Spanish. I seem to have an uncanny ability to draw out distain from even the kindest math or Spanish teacher.
Fortunately for me, my foreign language and number-learning days are long past as I enter what— gosh-willing— will be my last year as a student, soon to be hurled out into the cold, unrelenting “real world.”
I’m somehow both terrified and relived by the proposition of reality. Terrified, because I will have a degree in English and my goal is to write for a newspaper. The way that field is looking these days, I’d be better off saying that I want to be the president of a VCR company.
Or the general manager of the New York Islanders. Or a unicorn.
Despite the fact that I’m likely to be unemployed when I depart from West Chester in the spring— gosh willing—, I’m not entirely dreading the proposition.
College has been great, all four going on five years of it, but now that the end is in sight I just want to reach it and get it over with.
I’m the same way about vacations. The last day and a half of them I usually can’t wait to get home. Especially if there is a long drive waiting ahead of me. I just want to get on the road and get it over and done with. No lingering, no dragging of the feet, just driving.
Or in this case, replace driving with studying.
Four years down, one to go. It’s a strange feeling because for a bit it seemed like I would never reach the light at the end of the tunnel way back when I was a criminal justice major at Drexel University.
I’ve taken a sort of Whitman’s Sampler approach to higher learning. A little of this, a little of that, never enough to fill you up but just enough to know if you like it or not.
Criminal justice and I parted ways once I realized that my dream of running the “X-files” branch of the F.B.I. was unfeasible. I say unfeasible because I don’t believe that the “X-files” is actually a real thing, which is a shame because I would have made a fantastic Fox Mulder.
From there I decided to try my hand at nothing, I just took a term full of random classes that I’m sure count for very little now. Eventually majoring in nothing got old and I realized that Drexel was getting a bit old too.
After all, you can only explain to people so many times that you are going to Drexel, but you aren’t going to be an engineer.
Following that somehow I lucked into WCU. I don’t know how it happened mind you and WCU made me wait until the absolute last second before they let me in, which makes me think that options A through Y didn’t pan out.
Just call me plan Z.
After a cup of coffee as an education major— a noble field to be sure, but one that I feel I would have been ridiculously terrible at— I settled on my present, highly lucrative field.
Sure, it took a while to sort everything out, but that is really the point of college. The classes are nice— though many of them admittedly are sort of useless— and the relationships that you forge will hopefully last a lifetime, but the whole goal is to figure out just what you want to do with yourself for the foreseeable future.
If thinking about the future makes your head ache, don’t worry. Just work hard, keep your eyes open and enjoy the ride.
Colin McGlinchy is a fourth-year student majoring in English. He can be reached at CG646588@wcupa.edu.