Copy Editor

It’s Wednesday, 5:12 a.m. as I write this, and I’ve given up on sleep.

For over a month now I’ve been losing sleep at a disturbing rate. It didn’t seem so bad at first; missing an hour or two of sleep every night gave me the opportunity to catch up on schoolwork, watch movies or read for enjoyment, things I otherwise wouldn’t do during the day. But my condition’s gotten worse, and lately four hours of sleep has felt like an elusive luxury.

What can I say? Insomnia’s a scary thing.

With all this extra time on my hands, I’ve been keeping myself busy. Last week, for instance, around 5 a.m., I threw a pair of white boxers over my head, jumped up on my desk and started quoting lines from “The Ten Commandments.” With a nine iron staff in hand, I defiantly stared down my poster of The Rat Pack and cried out, in my best Charlton Heston voice, “Let my people go!”

Also, in vain attempts to stir myself from this strange living death, I have on numerous occasions resorted to formulating “Wake-Up Juice,” a nauseous brew consisting of Starbucks Frappacino and M ountain Dew that’s not unlike drinking mocha-flavored puke. And sometimes, I’ve discussed great works in English literature with Garth, the blue Triceratops Beanie Baby sitting on top of my monitor.

I’ve had some crazy, insomnia-induced antics lately, but nothing will ever compare to what I just did tonight.

I thought about the future.

Specifically, I thought about my future. I graduate in approximately 17 days, and sitting here in front of my computer, I question whether I’m ready to face the real world. Have I got what it takes to make it out there, and did NIU ever instill “it” in me? What if I get sick of my chosen profession? Will America leave me alone long enough to find something else that interests me? Only at 5:45 in the morning will you find me this insecure …

For four years I’ve lived in a microcosm of reality, a slice of life relatively free from worry and responsibility. You know, graduating from high school, I thought college was going to be a lifestyle of independence and preparation for my future, and to a degree it was, but as I anticipate graduating from college, I see that the world I’ve lived in for the past four years is vastly different from the one I’m about to join.

Right now, I feel like I’m about to be thrown out to the wolves, with nothing more than a diploma and a thorough understanding of the works of Jonathan Swift to protect me.

Not good enough.

I want to be reassured that when I go out there, things are going to be OK; that someone will be there to watch my back and that the time I spent at NIU will get me somewhere in life. I want to know that I won’t go out there and fail, and not knowing any of that casts my future in doubt, which is scary when you’re trying to find some small measure of security in your life.

But life doesn’t offer that security, and it never has, has it? This doesn’t mean the idea is entirely out of reach, just that graduating college guarantees nothing more than a diploma and a shot at something better. Nothing more, nothing less.

Not much of an ideology to go taking on the world with, I know, but it’s comforting, and maybe that’s all I need to get me through.