Onto the Next One...

Well friends, I sat down today and looked at a calendar and it seems as though my time here at Temple University is winding down. It seems like yesterday I skipped a day at Notre Dame and came down with my best friend for a college visit. I was a senior then and at the time things seemed so complicated, but looking back they were actually simplistic in nature. Today, life seems to move a lot faster, I really don't know where four years went. Sure I can tell you I studied a lot and made the grades, but the lessons that I value the most came from the people I met here, the situations we to get ourselves into, and how we somehow managed to get out of them. Luckily I never found myself in a jail cell next to my friends saying, "Man...we !#%@ed up."...but I will say there were a few occasions where we came close.

Sure, Temple puts a price on credit hours, but you really can't attach a monetary value to lessons you learn living in the city. You learn to look-out for your friends...learn to lock your bike with something stronger than a zip-tie...learn that fish that looks bad at the cafeteria probably is bad...learn that the trash-men will pickup and dispose of an entire mattress...learn that the police will be called and show if you decide to barricade your neighbor's door/steps/sidewalk completely with snow...you learn from the police that the four inch folding knife you carry with you everywhere is illegal but if you utilize it, just make sure you're justified...you find out that a dog will pee on a uniform that you just took out of the dryer and then leave a special gift for you in your adidas bag at the bottom of your closet...you learn that if your roommate has the door locked and is not answering, it's probably best to leave him/her alone or you'll get a case of beer thrown down the steps at your face, you may even see something you still can't erase from your memory...you learn that if you park in a lot and have a car alarm that continually goes off it will be professionally disabled by manually disconnecting it and letting the air out of all your tires...you find out that perhaps Chesapeake Bay Memorial Hospital may not exist after all...you may possibly come to conclusion that college may be the best damn time of your life.

I personally believe that I had a great time during college, but it's just the end of one chapter and the beginning of another page-turner.

For some the pages of the next chapter are still blank, others already have titles picked out, and yet others are still trying to go back and edit what they already wrote.

Me?

I'm not trying to go back and change anything or plan to win a Pulitzer Prize with my book, I'm just trying to make it a good read. Good enough so at the end, I can look back and say I did my best to be an honest, loyal, courteous, and respectable character.

I'll leave you with a high-school throwback: