Coming soon to a theater near you.

Fear…has a new name…and a new face which actually looks very much like its old face but only slightly younger, thanks perhaps in part to a nose job here and eye tuck there and a little dab of Grecian formula.

Anyway, fear… has a new name. You thought it was over. You thought he was leaving. Hell, he thought he was leaving. But, no. Not him. He’s Dan O’Shea—THE STUDENT WHO WOULDN’T GRADUATE! AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

You know, I’d be mad about this, but I figure it’s about par for the course. It’s just another example of what can happen when you go through college like a tightrope walker with a bad case of the hiccups.

Yes, I thought I was going to be graduating in a couple of weeks, but it turns out I’ll be making beautiful Northern Illinois University my home for the next few months.

Oh, but don’t worry. You come to terms with this sort of thing after you figure out that you’ve been given one last summer of airing it all out before you must encounter life sans summers.

It’s a blessing in disguise, the cloud with the silver lining, a frog that’s really a princess, a quirk of fate that can be turned my way. Or, perhaps it just means that I’m a failure … naahhh.

Anyway, I guess it’s not that big of a deal. Three months or so will go pretty fast. Hell, four years have gone pretty fast. You know, it seems like just yesterday was my second day at college. I was a shy, naive freshman throwing a football to trees out in front of Stevenson North because I hadn’t made any friends yet to play catch with. (Somebody pass the tissue.)

Yeah, it’s been a quick four years, but I’ve got them in a bottle—a beer bottle, of course. And after I’m gone, I can look in my bottle and see what college, an experience, not a place, was—parties, hard classes, incredibly easy classes, foreign teachers, residence hall food, snow storms, liquid lunches, best friends, all-nighters, sunsets from the eleventh floor, following a ransacked goalpost out of Huskie Stadium, dueling tubas playing “Wild Thing.”

It’ll never be like it was, but what will be can be good on its’ own.

Well, I might be doing the textbook lambada for another few months, but this is definitely my last column. Please hold your applause. I would just like to say thanks to all the girls who said I was cute but couldn’t remember my name, and screw you to all the girls who remembered my name but didn’t think I was cute. Also, to the people who have always told me I’m hanging on their walls, I hope that doesn’t mess you up later in life.

And to all those who hate my guts, thanks for not planting a bomb in my backpack.

And so, in closing, I’d like to offer a little slice of Victorian wisdom. Hit it, Billy:

“The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.”—William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (no, the book, not the magazine.)

Later, Gator.