Robert Scribner is a senior majoring in marketing. He can be contacted at [email protected]. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately. I’ve been spending it all over the place – at the grocer, at the Laundromat, inside the Internet, on top of my bed. I’ve been frivolously spending too much time, like a damned fool. And now time is running out.
No, I’m not talking about my lifetime. I’m talking about something much more brief and precious. Something difficult, yet beautiful. I’m talking about college time.
I am a senior in college. This is hard to believe, because it seems like only yesterday that I hadn’t been born yet. It seems like only last week that the universe was coming into existence. It seems like only last year that God was inventing himself. That’s how it seems to me, so you can see why my impending graduation is somewhat of a shock.
I realized that a few questions needed to be asked and answered simultaneously by my mind. What would I do with my degree? Would I have to get a job? Do people still have jobs these days? Isn’t that what computers and Internets are for?
And these questions made me sad. I realized that jobs are stupid, and I’m nowhere near prepared to dedicate myself to working 20-plus hours a week. I wondered, what are the alternatives?
Well, I thought, you could steal things for a living. Or if you were good enough at it, you could throw balls through hoops for a living. Unfortunately, I knew those routes weren’t for me. It was at that moment I remembered graduate school is a real thing.
The longer I considered graduate school, it began to seem more and more plausible. For one thing, when you finish, you automatically become a master at something. It’s called a master’s degree for a reason, people.
Now, I am quite good at several different things. I am very good at “Street Fighter 2: The Reckoning.” I am very good at eating exotic foods. I am very good at breathing. But even I am not a master of these things.
When I finish graduate school, I will have mastered the field of marketing. I will have absolutely dominated marketing as a major, and I love that. I won’t go so far as to acquire a doctorate degree, because I think forcing people to call you a doctor is a little pretentious. But to each his own, I guess.
Also, who wants to leave the college atmosphere to enter the real world? Who says that college isn’t in the real world, anyway? We’re not talking about Second Life here. This is no metaverse we’re living in. College is more like a real awesome world, if anything. I wouldn’t trade the college lifestyle for anything, except maybe a billion dollars.
So-called real world elitists can have their jobs. I’ll take Tuesday night Snoop Dogg concerts at Rick’s any day over working in an office, pretending to care about what I do. I am passionate about what I do right now, which is nothing at all. At least it’s fun. At least it involves Snoop Dogg and his new hit single, “Sensual Seduction.”
I realize that college will eventually come to an immediate end. I know that I’ll eventually have a normal job. And I don’t even care. I’ll continue having fun under the guise of advancing my education, not that the advancement won’t pay off in the end. Maybe it will pay off big, maybe, just maybe, a billion dollars big. Only time will tell.