A Summary of the Last Six Months in Explicit Detail

Hello, small web audience.

Six months ago, Taftese shut down along with my MU Student News column. It's hard to say what exactly caused my six-month hiatus from the world of complaining for the entertainment of others. It could have been any number of things: It could have been the fact that I got a new computer and I needed to find new web design software. It could have been second semester senioritis. Hell, it could have even been my crippling addiction to angel dust. But I don't think think it was any of those things. I think it was that I was just flat out of ideas after poking fun at college life's little foibles for four semesters. Quite simply, there are only so many foibles at which to poke fun, and so many times one can use the word "foible" in a paragraph. Because I have already exceeded that amount, I will move on to the next paragraph.

"So," you may be asking, "if you ran out of ideas for columns, why are you posting new columns on Taftese? Are you going to dump even more shit on the internet? Is that even possible?"

Well, it is possible, because they're still letting me post. And the reason I'm doing it again is that I'm no longer in school. In the past two months, I graduated from college, moved out of Columbia, moved back in with my parents, went job-hunting, found a job, and now I am working full-time. So although I have no ideas of how to make fun of college, my post-college experience is providing a wealth of opportunities to make fun of shit. So, without further ado, here are some post-college things I will make fun of:

Commencement

Being in a college commencement ceremony was as close to being in the All-Star game as I'll ever be: I had no interest in being there, it counted for nothing, and I did it for the fans. The fans, of course, were my mom and dad, who drove all the way down to Columbia to see me sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, stand up, walk, get an empty diploma holder, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit and sit. If your parents are like mine, they not only would have gone to the ends of the earth to see such an exciting display, but they also would have cut off my testicles had I decided to not participate in the ceremony. Although I find it quite perplexing that my parents would rather see me without testicles than drive seven hours in order to be bored to tears for three more hours, I followed their wishes, because they paid for all that worthless crap. And they paid for my cap and gown, too. HIYO!

The best part of the ceremony was at the end of it, when I got to toss my cap in the air with 4,000 of my College of Arts and Sciences peers. Except 3,999 of them did not partake in this tradition. And my mom was mad that she didn't get a picture with my cap on.

College grads-to-be: I warn you, unless you have an uncommonly cool graduation speaker, like Conan O'Brien, Sammy Sosa, or God, prepare to be bored. The guy who spoke at my graduation stressed that we "never take for granted our access to books." The rest of my fellow English majors and I immediately took his advice and pulled out books. Actually, we didn't, but a book would have been good to bring. Come to think of it, I should have brought a whole lot more stuff with me under that big, billowing graduation gown. I could have smuggled in a beach ball, some drugs, and a small Colombian child. Think of what fun at least two of those things would have brought to such a drab ceremony.

Working Full-Time

As I sit here writing this column, I have only worked full-time for a week and a half. My job, in case you're curious, is a three month internship in marketing and research, two things about which I know nothing, and frankly, two things I could not really care less about. But it pays money, and that's good. Anyway, I have come to the realization over the last week and a half that it's not this job I dislike; it's working in general. Let's make a little table, shall we?

As you can see, in the working world, there is much more bad than good. When the crossword is one of the day's highlights, you know that life has taken a turn for the less exciting. For those of you who are reading this because they have nothing else to do, be it that you are a college student with too much time on your hands, a high school student on summer vacation, or just a transient attempting to spend the night in an internet cafe, I encourage you to cherish these moments. Because sooner or later, you're gonna have to get a job, and that's totally going to suck. If you don't believe me, I encourage you to refer to the table above. In the meantime, it's 8:30, so I have to go to bed.

Original post date: 31 July 2003