I was holding a cigarette in my right hand and a crumpled schedule in my left when I took my first steps onto the hallowed campus of East Tennessee State University. Past vast expanses of angry frat boys in pickups peeling out at every turn, past awkward couples holding hands as if walking into the great unknown, past a giant phallic bell tower with superficial engravings worthy of induction into the Smithsonian, past the drone of conversations involving living arrangements and beer money, past a sea of cracked cement and sidewalk, and into the foreboding jaws of ‘higher education’.
I would imagine that westward settlers shared a feeling of nervous anticipation similar to the one pulsating through my 18-year-old frame. I had hitched my proverbial wagon to ETSU, and a four-year slug of concentrated learning was to be my own personal manifest destiny. As I trudged into Rogers-Stout Hall, I realized that the moment I stepped across the threshold and into my classroom, a very important book was about to close. Not only was the book of ‘summer 2006’ about to be shut, so too was the book of my childhood. Like a tribal teenager in New Guinea walking across hot coals or taming a wild beast of the jungle to bring back to the village, my rite of passage was about to take place.
And so it was. I entered the giant lecture hall, and stood with my mouth agape at the massive sea of faces in front of me. These faces were unfamiliar and cold to boot, a swarm of bodies that all seemed to be in on some secret of which I hadn’t been informed. I didn’t recognize a single, bloody one of them. Where would I sit? Did I smell funky? Had I remembered to scrape the Lucky Charms from between my teeth? Was my fly unzipped, happily exposing my naughty-parts to this mob of unforgiving strangers? Was I even wearing underpants?
Suddenly, my mind shifted back to the glorious days of high school; back to the days of barely literate coaches teaching ‘contemporary issues’ classes, to the days of yearbook signings and football games, to the days of rudimentary course material and all the time in the world to waste. It seemed that the future had sneaked up on me and delivered a Chuck Norris-esque roundhouse kick to my collegiate cranium.
This was sink-or-swim time. I was either going to buck up, take my seat, and go headlong into this college thing like a coked-up weasel, or I was going to suffer a fate worse than death – becoming a college dropout. Seriously considering the latter option, I looked up and took one more gander at the room full of peers before me. Suddenly, a realization washed over my body like a sponge-bath from a rotund nurse with the hands of a prison doctor . These people were going through the same thing. We had all come from different places, different viewpoints, and different educational backgrounds. But we were all in this together. We were no longer kids.We were all about to experience our first 55 minutes of adulthood.
It was at that moment that I, Jared Ongie, seized my destiny. I held my head high, shuffled into the seventh row of seats in Room 111, and in doing so left behind the kid I used to be in hall, never to be seen again. Suffice to say, this was a powerful moment.
In the weeks that follow, I intend to chronicle my aches, pains, victories, and defeats in this wild ride toward adulthood and becoming a ‘productive member of society’. The Ongie Beat will be my means to invite you to come on the journey with me, and examine what it means to be a product of our generation. We were born together. We grew up together. We entered our first college classes together. We’ll die together. Let’s join hands and make this happen.
Post-Script: There were, in fact, Lucky Charms lodged between my incisors. They were eradicated with the aid of Reach Mint Flavored Dental Floss.

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