`Tis a bit strange to be writing what will be my last column for the East Tennessean, which has prompted me to write about my time here at ETSU.
The past five-and-a-half years have seen the USS Shoun set sail into waters it had previously unexplored and as Dec. 16 arrives, my ship will most likely leave Port ETSU forever.
In between, however, it seems there has been a lifetime of memories packed into a little over half of a decade (boy, isn’t that depressing).
When I first started school here in the fall semester of 1995, I really had no idea what to expect. College, it seemed, was a world for people much smarter and much cooler than myself (much of the time it seems as though this past half decade has only served to reinforce that idea). But I was soon to discover that people in college care much less about what you wear, who your friends are, what you drive, what kind of grades you make and what position you played on the football team than people in high school do.
Many things were different on campus and in the world back in 1995 (I sound as if I am 83 instead of 23 when I say it like that).
Dr. Roy S. Nicks was the president of the university (I know, most of you are saying, “Roy who?”) and U.S. President Bill Clinton was only three years into his presidency, and he had not yet stained a now infamous blue dress.
Goldlink had yet to be introduced to the “Harvard of the South” and therefore each time registration period rolled around with its first-come-first-served class sign-up process, approximately 5,000 sleepy-eyed, unwashed, half-crazed, fully caffeinated students could be found lying on the steps and sidewalks of the administration building at the crack of dawn as if Stone Temple Pilots or the Dave Matthews Band had scheduled a concert in the Culp Center.
Ground had not yet been broken on our beautiful new $136 trillion library and if somebody had told us that in five years we would be bombarded with non-stop news about Y2K, OPEC and George W., we would have asked you if you were coming down with Mad Cow Disease.
Back then, we didn’t worry so much about not having a state-of-the-art physical activities center or a Burger King on campus as we did about whether or not O.J. Simpson liked to wear gloves when he killed people.
Since 1995, we have seen: a terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City; a tragedy of immense proportions thanks to two teenage fools at a high school in Colorado; Carlos Santana crawl out from under a rock and win numerous awards for an album full of songs he neither wrote nor sang; a movie about a sinking ship send everybody into a tizzy; and the New York Yankees show underdogs and downtrodden individuals everywhere that life just isn’t fair.
We learned and then became disgusted with the Macarena and now we wonder “Who Let the Dogs Out.”
Also, the real sign of the apocalypse has become clear in these few short years – the best golfer in the world is black and the best rapper in the world is white.
Amid all of this, the powers that be at ETSU managed to rename nearly every street on campus (see: Boundary Road becoming J.L. Seehorn Jr. Road) but could not add one single parking space even though our state legislators felt we could pay a lot more for tuition every year.
It hasn’t all been bad – far from it. For myself, there were many big events and bright moments.
I realized I would have to move to Yaberstank, Siberia to find a job as a teacher and therefore chose to major in journalism. The jury is still out on that one.
But seriously, in journalism I found several things: something I am somewhat good at; a new job; new friends; a greater sense of purpose in life and a strangely peaceful acceptance that I will be poor the rest of my life.
I have also found that I love to work out (with my brother in dark, decaying Brooks Gym), that I hate Chick-Fil-A with a burning passion, that moist towelettes are a little slice of heaven and that there really is a beautiful, wonderful girl I want to spend the rest of my life with.
I have come to greatly appreciate the fact that my parents sent me to college in the first place. There was a time when ditch-digging or the Marines were more preferrable options in my mind.
To keep this column from getting too gooey and from sounding like a eulogy for myself, I must end it in true Other White Meat fashion. So I leave you with this – once you figure out what your moist towelettes are and come to appreciate the legacy of J.L. Seehorn Jr., you will receive total conciousness, and that’s nice.
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