Thinking about the last four years has been a surreal experience. Four years of friends and enemies, victories and defeats and the brief moments of joy that made them all worthwhile, and here I am, sitting back with a curious sense of detachment as I watch my life at NIU come screeching to an inevitable halt.

Welcome to my last column.

I think this is supposed to be the one where, misty-eyed and drugged on insincere emotions, I sob over how amazing my time at NIU has been, and tell you what you should be doing in order to have a successful and inspirational stay here. This is true. And this is false.

Mostly though, it’s a lot of unnecessary, moody sentiment, and you’ll hear none of that from me … not much of it, anyway.

There’s about nine days left until graduation, nine days to sweat and nervously await the future. What bothers me though, and this is said purely out of spite for the system, is that no one ever asked me if I wanted to go out there and pay bills, slave for The Man and play this twisted little game called life. I was happy here in school, in this world away from the World. Despite my wrath, though, I am not scared. For the past two weeks, I have been host to a strange, Zen-like calm, and while my nerves have long since been fried into small dead things, I think I’m ready to go out there and do something with my life.

Ranting aside, I’ve had a good time at NIU, and the only regret I carry is that I didn’t have time to write more. I keep thinking that if I had started this sooner, I could have done something better with this little soapbox, made a bigger impact. I may never get another chance to write for an audience this big, so if this is really the end, and I have to give this column a proper burial, I hope I gave you something worth reading, because I had a blast writing it.

I wasn’t really planning on offering you any advice until I went home this weekend. While reading “Stormwatch: Change or Die”, by Warren Ellis, I came across an interesting line:

“Think for yourself, and question authority.”

The impact of this line hit me like a sledgehammer to the head. This is the ideology I’ve decided to take with me out into the world, and the only advice I can offer you. Make this school, and everyone running it, work for you. Don’t forget that NIU is a business, and as such, is here to make money. You already know we were sold out to Pepsi, and that students returning to the dorms in the fall will be losing Dining Dollars. And, in the April 25 issue of the Star, we saw that our instructors are being denied the competitive and healthy salaries they deserve. Question authority, please. Because if you don’t now, do you think they’ll let you later?

Before I forget, I wanted to thank some people, specifically: Roman, Phil, Koscielak, Sloppy, Laura, Squat, 1141, Bryan Miller, Jen D’Souza, Julie Hartman, Susan Rzadski and Peggy for keeping me sane when I felt like things were getting out of control, slightly demented when I was taking life too seriously and otherwise encouraging me to keep writing.

This column means a lot to me, and I can’t thank you enough for hearing me out. If I did my job, I reminded you that Life isn’t all that bad; difficult and frustrating, sure, but strange and terribly fun when we can stop long enough to just smile and live.

Cheers.