The End

I'm paging through Facebook and I see this girl.

"Wow," I think. "Wow. She's attractive."

I get this sort of feeling like I'm looking at someone special, someone I'd really like to talk to, date, hug, have quiet moments with and then I see the number 2011. She graduates in 2011, she is a freshmen. I can't date her. No quiet moments or drunken flirtations. I'm not going to be that creep. She's a freshmen. Off limits.

And I wonder: how did I become a senior? How did I become a 22-year-old man sitting at the end of college life? Where did the time go? When did it pass? Was I not looking? Aren't you supposed to notice things like this?

Really. What the fuck?

And I look back at the girl's picture. Cute smile. Born 1990, she's 18.

"Well..." I say to myself, "legally..."

* * * *

I get the e-mails. I get the e-mails from the teachers. The e-mails about RAC numbers and what courses are offered to who and when. Those mass e-mails arrive every few days. They used to be so important, life changing, life deciding--getting the course I want to make the life I want!--but now they don't apply to me.

At one time course sign up was a map to my future, now it's just a website with forms and numbers and course descriptions displayed in pixels on a computer screen. There is nothing solid about it.

I felt this way once before, during Sophomore year--felt like college was a fake. Like school was immaterial, like classes were nothing but ideas. No substance, just hours of time analyzing arguments about other people's way of thinking about thoughts.

Maybe I felt that way because I was majoring in English, maybe it was the casual disillusion of youth. Anyway, I almost dropped out.

I mentioned it to my parents, to my guidance counselor, to my roommate Pat. Pat told me it was a bad idea, that in today's world we need a college education, that knowledge was the key to my future.

And then he was gone.

"I think I'm dropping out," he said one morning.

His eyes were bloodshot and he was slouched in his chair in front of a computer, working on a final paper that was already late.

"I'm dropping out," he said again.

Pat left UNH in the middle of sophomore year. He was an army type of guy, into army type things. He knew the names of guns and fighting formations. He was a member of ROTC. He left UNH and went to Iraq.

After winter break, when I came back to the dorm, I thought Pat was still living in my room. I mean, I knew he was gone--he told me. But my body thought he was still there.

I would slam open the door trying to scare Pat. But there was no Pat. I would get bored and head up to my dorm room, hang out with Pat. But there was no Pat.

So my body slowly forgot, or I consistently remembered, or just realized: Pat's not at UNH anymore--my room is empty. The door will stay locked when I'm not there. For the rest of the year I will never come back to something I don't expect. 

What's the fun in that?

* * * *

Junior year I worked hard and got good grades. I changed my major to journalism and a respectable teacher told me analyzing symbolism was bullshit. It was a good year.

* * * *

First semester of senior year I studied abroad. It was probably the worst thing I could have done. The experience was incredible, eye opening. It gave me perspective.

I lived in London and traveled Europe during the weekends. I rode the tired flights to confusing countries. I made new friends and slept in strange hostel beds.

There was a girl in Rome, hallucinations in Amsterdam and a homeless midnight in Krakow, Poland.

Coming back to UNH I see that if there is meaning in life, it's in the moments of intensity and not the humdrum rhythm of essays and parties that define the college experience.

I wish there was more to say, but there isn't. I came to UNH four years ago and now it's over.

THE END