With a scant two weeks of classes left, I’ve come to realize that school’s just about over forever. Well, for me at least.

Some of you poor suckers still have years and years of mind-numbingness left forced upon you at a going rate of $1,027 per class (and that’s just for the books).

I can’t help but feel college has largely been a rest stop on the highway of my life. And not one of those good rest stops like they have in Florida with the free orange juice, but one of the crappy ones with a single outhouse and a creepy old guy asleep on the bench.

It’ll be nice to get out of State College, which I’m convinced has conspired to kill me.

“Why would a city try and kill me?” you ask. Well, why don’t you shut up, stop asking questions and keep reading — I’m about to tell you.

State College is trying to kill me at its traffic crossings, or as I refer to them, the “Crosswalks of Doom.”

In most normal, non-dumb cities, the traffic lights have a bit of a delay between the time one direction turns red and the other turns green.

This gives the intersection a chance to clear of people who swear they weren’t running a red light really officer it was yellow when I started through.

However, in State College, there is no delay. Once one light turns red, the other goes green.

So people are still flying through the intersection even after the little white man’s told me it’s OK to walk. Yet another lie by whitey.

But despite disliking State College’s killing-me policy, I do thoroughly enjoy its getting me completely wasted policy.

How many other towns have a density of 2.7 bars per square foot? And people wonder why there’s a binge drinking problem.

Even students on the five-year program have trouble finding enough time to go to all the bars.

One thing I will miss about school is nap time. Now, while I haven’t technically had nap time since way back when, I’ve been unofficially celebrating it pretty much every day in every class.

Some teachers take issue with this, but it’s their own fault.

If you don’t want me to fall asleep, stop being so boring. They’re so boring they easily make me fall asleep despite sitting in the most uncomfortable chairs on this side of (insert clever analogy here).

Speaking of those chairs, oh how I hate them. I dedicate most of my awake time in class trying to figure why they’re so small. All I’ve come up with is that people used to be much smaller.

And unfortunately the “Small Ones” were all right-handed. Which means if you’re a normal-sized, left-handed person, attempting to sit in the desks (much less write in them) is about as much fun as watching a non-stop marathon of Suddenly Susan in Hitler’s underground bunker and he’s just popped the last cyanide pill.

I won’t miss the complete lack of parking either. Jesus could fly down for the Second Coming (or 728,327th Coming if you believe all the crazies claiming to be Jesus) driving His water-powered cloud-car (which you know God totally bought for him, only sons are always so spoiled) and he wouldn’t be allowed to park anywhere.

And if he did somehow find a spot, he’d probably be towed.

Which would totally piss Him off and he’d go all Old Testament, smiting people and turning them into pillars of salt and pepper.

So yeah, it’ll nice to be free of the parking tyranny. Though I still think Penn State needs a large centralized parking facility. Here’s my idea: Let’s tear down the HUB.

I’ve been racking my brain for at least five minutes trying to figure out what purpose it serves and I still haven’t come up with anything.

Sure, some people will have to find a new place to play board games on a Friday night because they didn’t get invited to any parties and others will need to find somewhere else to buy bad food, but I’m sure we’ll all show up to watch the day they blow up the bookstore. Try to sell me a $90 textbook now, bitch.

So, as I leave Penn State, fondly remembering the times I drank myself so stupid I can’t remember what happened and repressing the rest, I find myself torn between nostalgiating the college experience and imagining what I could’ve bought with all my tuition money.

I’m pretty sure I’d rather have the world’s largest private monkey collection than a well-rounded liberal education. Or a monkey-shaped helicopter. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a giant flying monkey helicopter! Yeah, something with monkeys. Monkeys are totally cooler than school.

Originally published in The Daily Collegian.

# 2003 Apr 08