As I write this piece, I'm sitting on the edge of a planter box on the University of California's Berkeley campus, my intellectual and literal (okay, not literal in the sense of knocking out a bathroom ceiling tile and living up there) home for the past four years. I've just turned in my senior thesis (in candidacy for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Sociology), and in half an hour I have to attend a reception at the chancellor's house, but for now it's me time. No obligations, no concerns, just me, my laptop and the ants I think I just sat on.
Before I settled on this spot to sit down and write, I did something I hadn't done since I was a freshman and went sightseeing. I wandered around campus with the sure-handed familiarity of a graduating senior, but also with the wide-eyed wonder of a new freshman. And in a way, I really was looking at the campus anew; I was seeing my school not through the highlighter-colored lenses of the typical overworked student, but for its natural beauty, its urbane elegance and everything in between. I ascended the Campanile to look over the San Francisco Bay; I pushed through the brush to watch the trickle of Strawberry Creek.
And this, to abandon all pretense of originality, is the main piece of advice I would give to incoming college freshmen. Whether you go to a lofty tower constructed from the mortal remains of your childhood favorite cartoon elephant or some crappy little bullshit community college, you are enjoying a privilege that not everyone--not even in Canada--gets the chance to have. So make the most out of your 3-5 years, because they will pass you by like a cartoon animal, leaving you spinning lazily before you collapse (the collapse being a metaphor for grad school.) Seriously, though, although there'll definitely be those interminable nights of studying, you'll find the week replacing the day as your basic unit of time. And only some of that can be attributed to bender-induced unconsciousness (not to be mistaken with Bender-induced unconsciousness, which only happens to Futurama characters.)
So read a book, write a letter, take a walk, do whatever engages or challenges you. College is one of the few situations that offers both significant opportunities for personal growth and the free time to exercise them; by sitting around on the Internet instead, you do yourself a disservice. Hell, you could even end up drawing anime fanart and relating your life to comics, and nobody wants that. That said, I've preached enough, so enjoy some media. This was a really shitty copout for a graduation drawing.
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