This post will probably be all over the place, so excuse me for rambling.
Anyway, I finished my final project yesterday, so I have only two days of school left - a communication department commencement party on Thursday and the actual graduation ceremony itself Saturday. God, it's so bizarre to even think about it.
It seems as if it were just yesterday that I graduated from high school - and now, four years later, I'm essentially finished with college (I just need to do my internship, and I'll officially have my degree in the fall). I cannot even begin to understand how four years flew by so quickly.
The whole thing is even worse because, honestly, I completely wasted my first couple of years at Cal Poly Pomona. I was one of those losers who just went to school for classes and then went straight home. My first couple of years weren't bad, but they were horribly boring. There is really nobody I can blame for that besides myself. They were boring years because I made them boring years.
College is just like any other part of life - if you don't give something to it first, then you will not get anything from it, and it will suck. It just will. Everyone gets the, "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PARTICIPATE" speech before they go to college, but a lot of people probably do not pay attention to it, myself included. But, man, those first couple of years, I felt no connection to Cal Poly at all. I might as well have been attending some random community college. It was pretty terrible.
If you're one of those people, then stop being a loser like I was. Find something. Seriously. I found The Poly Post, and my two years working there have been the best of my life. The people I've met have been amazing, the product I've helped to create each week has been amazing and the things I've seen on campus that I probably would not have seen were it not for The Post have been amazing. Just look at the things I've done because of The Post:
- Gone to several amazing sporting events, including the NCAA Division II Track and Field National Championships and our conference's basketball tournament
- Attended the 30-year reunion of players from our now defunct football team
- Interviewed Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills
- Participated in two fantastic dodgeball tournaments
- Made a movie
- Had my first night out at a club (that's a story in and of itself ... lol)
- Added like five bajillion things to my resume that I never would have from classes
- Got paid to write about the Lakers (technically >_>)
- Got paid to use the word 'Swedes' in a headline
- Got paid to write silly headlines in general
- Reported on a career fair (wait, that was actually really boring)
- Wrote 130 articles in all (this is seriously the most prolific I've ever been with anything in such a short span of time).
... and so on.
I do not take myself very seriously at all, but I am really proud of the work I've done at The Post. The newspaper is the first thing that comes to mind for me when I think about campus pride. I could not care less about all the symbols of campus pride people like to throw around - that is, unless they're student made. That is something people should be proud of. Oh, but let's push a building all the time because it has a big point and looks cool!!!!! Yeah!!!!! (Sorry, I'm still bitter about this. Let's move on.)
Putting in all that work has changed me so much. It has given me a stronger sense of purpose. It has opened me up to new experiences. It has made me a more effective communicator. It has made it so much easier for me to open up to people and relate to them.
It has given me so many friends I'll cherish for the rest of my life.
I suppose that is what scares me most about graduation - not that I'm finally making the big leap to adulthood, but that there is a serious possibility I'll lose many of the friends I've made in college. That happened after high school when pretty much everyone I knew scattered off into random directions. I'm going to try my damnedest to make sure that doesn't happen this time, though. Fuck, if I lost contact with every friend I made in college, it would seriously break my damn heart.
Thank God for Facebook.
Um, once again I've lost my train of thought. All I can think about right now is how I'm sure to turn into a bawling baby Thursday and especially Saturday. I rarely cry, but shit, I'm not going to be able to stop it. I know it.
