Wednesday, May 22, 2013

The (Small and Pitiful) List of Things I’ll Miss About College

So I graduated college last Friday.  A lot of people I know were sad to be finished with their four years of undergraduate schooling.  No more parties, no more BS (I mean, sorry, "gen ed") classes, no more dorm living, no more fake life.  “Wah I don’t want to leave.  I’m going to miss this so much!!!!!”

You kidding?  College sucked.  It was basically just high school on a larger scale; at least my college was.  And high school sucked.  I am not a school person, and I will not miss about 95% of it.  There are some things I will miss, though, and I’ve compiled a list of them here.

1) $5 Target mirror
I will miss you, $5 Target mirror.  I bought you on a whim at the beginning of my senior year in order to make sure that I looked alright before leaving my apartment.  You were slightly warped and always managed to make me look thinner than I am.  This flattered me.  This also allowed me to skip many a workout on lazy days because I looked great in you, $5 Target mirror, and why bother working out when I look great?  So here’s to you, $5 Target mirror, that I so carelessly threw out in an effort not to bring as much home with me as possible.  You will be missed.


2) Conveniently large bathroom
For some reason, the people who designed the apartments at my college thought to themselves “The bathrooms here should be REALLY HUGE!!!” and ran with that thought.  Therefore, the bathroom was conveniently large.  It was convenient for:
a) having social gatherings of 10-20 people within the confines of only the bathroom
b) having a dance party for yourself
c) Parkour
d) blasting music while you were showering which echoed nicely off of the entirely tiled surfaces within the bathroom


Seriously, why is there so much free space?  Anyway, I enjoyed my time spent in you, conveniently large bathroom, and now any normal size bathroom will pale in comparison because they’re merely not large for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

(Alternatively, the conveniently large bathroom came with an inconveniently small shower in which it was impossible to shave one’s legs.  BUT I DIGRESS.)

3) Absurd amount of closets
I’m tempted to say that the people who designed our apartments at school just loved an abundance of things.  An abundance of space, to be exact, as seen in both #2 and also the absurd amount of closets that we were given.  Not only was there a front entry way closet, there were two fairly decent-sized closets in the hallway that led to our bedrooms, as well as a large back closet that could fit a bed in it.  Not even kidding.  A regular, twin-sized mattress could fit easily in the back closet.  As a matter of fact, the majority of our closets went unused.  Being deprived of closet space growing up and soon to be moving into a most-likely tiny apartment, I regret not having fully embraced the closet space that was so generously bequeathed upon me.  So goodbye, absurd amount of closets.  I never took the time to know you the way that I should have.

4) The prime parking spot
You were the closest parking spot to the apartment buildings on campus and, though you were rarely free, when you were open it was triumphant.  You made me feel invincible when I cruised down the aisles and saw you sitting there, wide open and waiting for me to park my car in you.  And when I was the proud owner of you for those times that were very few and far between, I felt successful.  I felt as though my life had meaning.  I felt powerful.  Until, of course, I had to go to the grocery store and then was left without you*.  Thank you for the memories, prime parking spot.  You know how extraordinary you are to come across.

*Often after leaving for the grocery store, you are forced to park in the really bad parking spot in the very far away parking lot, which you were almost always guaranteed to have to park in on a rainy/snowy/precipitationy day when you have 11 bags of groceries and no friends that are willing to help you carry them.  Stupid really bad parking spot.

5) Extremely quick-heating stove top burner
The front right burner on my stove was a real hot-head, in the best way possible.  When placed on the lit burner, a pot of water would boil in practically 60 seconds.  Maybe even less time.  I could literally watch a pot of water boil in front of my very eyes, basically while watching pigs fly and fat ladies sing.  Every other burner I’ve ever come across in my life has taken minutes, hours, DAYS to boil the water that I just want to cook some simple penne pasta in.  I’ve nearly starved waiting for pots of water to boil.  But not with you, extremely quick-heating stove top burner.  You’ve made all of my cooking dreams come true.  You were so good to me that I chose to ignore that the burner directly behind you never once worked.  Even the time I tried to heat some sauce up and didn’t know why it refused to get hot.  Your tenacity and dedication to get as hot as possible as fast as possible, extremely quick-heating stove top burner, was just the thing to get me through.  I’m sure I’ll never meet another burner quite like you again in my lifetime.


6) Close proximity to literally anywhere you want to eat at all times ever
My college is located right next to a highway that is atrocious to drive on but is lined with basically every restaurant you could ever want to eat at ever (and some you’d probably never actually want to go to but definitely go to anyway because you’re a poor college student and that’s what those places are for, right?  I’ll let you determine those places off of the following sub-list of this master list).  There’s diners, Panera, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Boston Market, IHOP, Chipotle, Japanese places, Chinese places, Thai places, Italian places, Moes, Starbucks, frozen yogurt places, ice cream places, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, and obviously bagel places galore.  Everywhere you could ever want to eat was basically within a 10 minute round-trip drive.  Now, I'm not sure that I'll ever be in close proximity to literally anywhere I want to eat at all times anymore.  With such a variety of options on the local highway, and such terrible food in the cafeteria, I guess it's only fair they placed my college on said local highway.  Cheers to the close proximity to all of those great(/terrible/gross/awesome) food places.  I'll miss you when I have to cook my own food probably all the time forever when I'm on my own.

7) Groundhog friends
You were always there, sitting outside the full-length windows right by my kitchen table, eating grass and scurrying around on your little groundhog legs.  You were plump and adorable and I will miss watching you scurry while I eat my breakfast.  I’ll always remember the time I got a picture with one of you, little groundhogs.  I’ll see you again someday, friends.


For real, though, I guess I’ll miss my friends and a handful of professors.  You guys are pretty cool.  And I guess I'll miss sitting around pretending to do things when I'm actually just watching GSN and eating tortilla chips and salsa, even though I'll probably continue this into adulthood.  But I’m real glad I graduated, and this list probably reinforces that.  Bye 4ever college.

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