BY JESSE TAYLOR

In print | Published May 1, 2003

I’m graduating. Be sad now. Thanks for that little bit of self-indulgence.

I run a political weblog (an online political journal with frequent small editorial pieces). It’s at http://www.pandagon.net. It’s a nice little enterprise that I started because I was bored last summer, and it carried me all the way to the realization that I should have been a political science major.

I hate the Internet.

Anyway, I’m sitting here writing this, and I can’t think of a unifying editorial theme for a farewell piece. Sure, I can say goodbye, I can relive my greatest journalistic feats, such as writing a piece on videogames my freshman year when I couldn’t even scrounge up the barest nugget of an actual idea for a real article (I also wrote for The Phoenix in spring ‘00), I can just go over what I’ve already talked about already … but I’m not concluding a hastily thrown-together paper for a pass/fail PDC. I’m doing something even less important.

As a senior, I remember four years ago, when I was king of the whole damned world. I had scholarships, accolades, a bevy of meaningless extracurriculars that I tossed aside like so many issues of People magazine after I got into college. People wanted to give me an education — poof, four years of education, a degree and, while you’re at it, have some pizza. Life was good. Children followed me around, tugging at my coattails (yes, I received my acceptance letters in spring, but it was a chilly spring). They would look up at me, their eyes full of the eternal hope that only youth or really good marijuana can bring, and say, “I aspire to be you and shall devote myself to the example you set.” These were very, very intelligent children, with large vocabularies and good priorities.

Now, I’m graduating, and I can only wistfully stare back to that more innocent time. My mailbox only overflows with offers of credit lines that I can’t afford and reminders that, after I graduate, everything this school gave to me will be taken and given to some other 17-year-old sap … including my degree. I need to talk to someone about that.

I am no longer the giant among awkward soon-to-be men that I was four years ago but instead a tiny, tiny guppy in a sea of slightly less awkward conclusions to this metaphor. I am going out into the world. The world is a place where every new entry into it doesn’t feel the need to remark that we’re in a bubble, as if nobody’s ever noticed that before. The world is a place where Republicans who complain about not having their voices heard get a lead story in Time instead of the Swarthmore College Bulletin. The world is a place where I want to live with you and me and our whole big family – except by myself. I need my space, damn it.

At some point, I will look fondly back and remember none of the following classes: Quantum Physics, Psychology of Religion, Introduction to Astronomy and my introductory English class. It’s nothing against the teachers or departments. I just will not remember a single thing that you tried to teach me, and there is nothing you could have done to change that. I applaud your efforts and wish you the best of luck in future endeavors that don’t involve attempting to educate me.

This, gentle reader, is my farewell to Swarthmore — the finest place that a bunch of moderately famous people graduated from even though you didn’t know it. Good luck, and may your complete lack of respect for copyright laws through file-sharing programs not be punished by a soulless, money-hungry corporation. I know mine wasn’t.

You can reach Jesse Taylor at jtaylor1@swarthmore.edu.

« RETURN TO OPINIONS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »