Travis WillmorePlanning for ma퀌�ana, but first a siesta

Now that we’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, the Vanguard will soon be putting out a graduation issue dedicated to PSU’s soon-to-be alumni.

They certainly deserve a lot of recognition for making it all the way through. I would like to take this opportunity, though, to recognize those of us who have been in school a long time but still have at least another year to go.

I happen to be one of these people and, hey, I’m always down to take an opportunity to recognize myself.

We the undergrads still have term upon term of studying, deadlines and trying vainly to stay awake in class before we can leave Southwest Broadway in the dust and go on to, we hope, start raking in the dough somewhere. We could be derailed by financial calamity, or GPA flameout, or bad nutrition or SARS before we reach our intended goal. And even if we do get there, there’s no telling whether the job market will have recovered or whether it will still be circling the drain.

It would be bad enough having to drop out of college and end up pumping gas to pay for a 20-year-old Corolla and a two-bedroom flea-trap apartment with four other roommates.

However, I get the sense that it would be even worse to end up in that same situation with your master’s degree hanging on the wall when you come home from work. Neither one of these situations would be particularly pleasant, though, and you could pull your hair out at night worrying about any other number of potential pitfalls that the future might hold, if you’re into hair-pulling.

Rather than get all apprehensive, though, the thing to do is to face this ominous future head on and decide to make next year count for something. My New Year’s resolution will be to transform into a serious, focused thinking machine starting this fall. Student New Year, that is.

For anybody in school, the real new year is in September when school starts again and January 1st is basically an arbitrary event that only affects what number you write on the date line on your checks. If you’re still qualified to write checks, of course.

How novel, you say. Getting serious about school, after being in school for three years. Well, ya gotta start somewhere. In college, people often have a hard time adjusting to the fact that the safety net they’ve taken for granted their whole lives soon isn’t going to be there in the same way it used to. Continuing an education after high school rather than going directly to work often seems to have the psychological effect of continuing your sense of adolescent invincibility well past the teen years. The illusion that things will continue to be fine for you no matter how much you fuck up continues to be a very alluring one even as the financial assistance from home dries up, or the scholarship runs out, or the student loan gets defaulted on. The sooner you realize the very temporary nature of your safety net, the better.

Having been in college since The Year 2000, I could have been graduating right now if I had been taken a more single-minded approach to accomplishing such a thing. It also would have helped if my old school, OSU, hadn’t hooked me up with an academic adviser who talked me into taking chemistry, calculus and mechanical engineering all in one term. This put me in the seventh circle of GPA hell right from the get-go. How-evah, I can still claim most of the blame myself, as my priorities mostly fell under the category of instant gratification. My first two years in school, I was a total rock star in pretty much every sense of the word, except in the sense of having any money. Or playing in a band.

So those of you not graduating in the coming weeks, learn from your Uncle Motor Mouth and plan on getting your act together for next fall. This is much less stressful than planning on getting it together for the next couple of weeks, considering that it’s almost time for finals.

Sure, it might be beneficial to focus on responsibilities in the immediate future, rather than at some hazy point a few months down the road. But who wants to focus on that? It’s sunny outside, the Rose Festival is coming up, end-of-the-year parties are coming up.

In fact, what am I doing in this stuffy room typing my column? I could be chilling in the grass out in the park blocks, or going in the fountain down by the waterfront or sitting in one of the massaging chairs on display in the Sharper Image at Pioneer Place.

I still have a few things left to say on this subject, in which I’ll reveal the TRUE secret to academic success. So I’ll be back later, I swear.