BY ADAM DALVA

In print | Published April 24, 2008

It’s the ghost-making time of the year again, when the cruel string of obligations and events leave us all with blue veins popping through pale skin, massive circles under our blood-wrath colored eyes, caffeine scented sweat and little choice but to wear the same loose-fitting Tarble grease-stained outfits for days on end while taking Febreze showers whenever possible. Think about it: this week alone has probably involved final essays, honors essays, whatever science majors do, Crunkfest (which I guess is as school-sanctioned as the Crum Regatta now; at this point we just need to name it after a suffragette and have the mascot show up), the Jolt’s full comeback and immediate self-immolation (if you find Raghu’s backpack lying unattended, do not pick it up, report it directly to the nearest Public Safety officer), the perfect storm of what I like to call the hormone trifecta — 1. The phenomenon that only discretion prevents me from describing as the “spring horny” 2. The accompanying return of the dibs system among seniors frantic to get through their hook-up bucket lists (pull out your handbooks, people) 3. Chelsea Clinton —, terrified specs wandering around asking for directions to some entity called “the gym,” the epic new M83 album, the Juggernaut-like arrival of pollen on my raincoat, the only interesting Pennsylvania primary in decades, prolly the first issue in my time here that more than four percent of our campus has disagreed on any subject except of course the Greeks and the Turks vociferously arguing over the origins of the Mediterranean bar, Assassins, the last pub nights, where every rendition of “Closing Time” features a terrified cluster of people gripping each other tightly as the future rushes in and assorteds fall off the wobbly table, everyone you know producing college-culminating cultural events that you must attend at risk of being branded a bad friend, soldiering on despite the odds with the massively nerfed Captain Falcon, the inevitable blaze of glory on CD 3rd, underclassmen asking about pre-registration and dorms (well, that one actually cheers me up at this point), Dan Deacon’s transcendent hoe-down, unrequited love admission week (most everyone does it pre-finals so their fetal-positioned-4-boxes-of-tissues-stomach-wrenching-pillow-biting-Jeff Buckley-on-repeat-roommate-eyerolling-nights don’t directly lead to failing out, we’re clever that way here) and the hyper-intense claiming of end-of-year spots in the library, a brutal mix of playground tactics and tearful begging.

Now, that monstrosity of a run-on above is chock full of tempting subjects for a Phoenix Column, which almost seems unfair after the continual struggle to find something to write about in the doldrums days before semester breaks, but this one is going to have to be a little bit different, because this is (barring a possible failure to understand the Social Sciences distribution) my last Phoenix column. “Oh no,” you surely are thinking as you wolf down your sloppily constructed Sharples fajita, “self-important blather approaching, let’s see what religious group has reacted with outraged editorials to Chender’s latest column instead” (as a brief aside, does the staff rehire him just to ensure the Living section is full every other week? This guy makes my watershed Bryn Mawr column of ’07 look like Barack Obama’s race speech by comparison.).

Anyway, for those remaining, this is my 24th column in the Phoenix (which I guess is somewhat apropos given Jack Bauer’s critical influence on these formative years) and as I sit with laptop burning a cancerous hole through the propagator (with my toe bleeding for some reason, best not to think about it probably) and 94 percent of the chaos list above directly consuming my life, that seems a little more important than anything else right now. Two and a half years ago, when optimism was still the rule of the day, I turned in a sample column, which has thankfully never been published, whose thesis was, to quote, “If someone on (the Pterodactyl) field had a real bat, a large amount of people could be badly injured or killed before anyone got caught” (Dalva, 2005). The effort is, rest assured, rill bad and borderline illegal, but due to the nepotistic influences of Ben Bradlow (hey, did you know he was Jewish? How could he never have mentioned this before?), worthier candidates were denied the lucrative job opportunity and the only entry in the “Activities” section of my resume began.

In seriousness, from my first column on Paces (which stands up surprisingly well despite the fact that it’s a Bill Simmons rip off, the following section: “10:12 — The first Phoenix insult arrives when I tell some random dude that I am writing a column and he condescendingly scoffs ‘I’m sure a lot of people will read it.’ The first girl-girl ass slap also takes place; in a shocking upset, this beats the first extended ‘Heyyyy!’ by a good five minutes.” just made me laugh up some nervous vomit) to the one where I didn’t have an idea until 30 minutes before it was due and bizarrely wrote about how I wanted a house that just had an elevated mattress to roll on to my shocking revelation that I had injected Mark McGwire’s buttocks with steroids when we played for the A’s in ’89, it has been … (Wow, I actually don’t know how to write positive statements in my Phoenix column voice, I was just staring at “really awesome” for five minutes thinking about how publishing it would invalidate two years of snarky.)

Honestly, we’ve been at this school for about twenty percent of our lives and it’s hard to try to sum it up in any meaningful way, so lets suffice to say that the generous editors of the Living section who have somehow had to deal with 24 desperate extension requests (including this one!), the staff at large, Meghan Downie’s artwork, all the emails and those wonderful moments when someone introduces themselves to me, says I love your column and then watches as I try to hide my newly massive ego have made this experience my favorite one here. Thanks for sticking with it through the neuroses, the lists, the terrible advice and the parentheticals and, as always, if you’re trying to find me I’ll be the one under my bed curled into a little ball and trying to figure out what’s next.

Adam is a senior. You can reach him at adalva1@swarthmore.edu.

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