So long, and thanks
February 4, 2003 by David Blackman(for all the fish) For the first time at Stanford Im taking a class where I feel completely lost. Its a new feeling. I keep thinking of that Simpsons episode where Lisa wants to drop out of military school. Bart says I thought you came here looking for a challenge,, to which Lisa responds Duh! A challenge I could do! Thats me. Sure its fun to learn stuff and to grapple with problems, but not when I have more pressing needs, like reading Dostoevsky or playing Grand Theft Auto III, and not when the homework is graded.
I'll probably miss it when its over.
This is my last column, and as much as its been torture for me to come up with a topic every week, I've loved it. I've loved the experience and I once again need to thank all my readers for their support and feedback. I wanted to go out with a bang, with the best column ever written, but this is just a tribute. Im going to sum up this quarter in my last column, so this is just a collection of little bits I never got a chance to expound on.
Why does everyone expect to find their soulmate while doing laundry? Or is that just me? I think this is another idea of love thats been forced on us by sitcoms. I barely ever talk to people in the laundry room, let alone engage in deep, meaningful conversations. Besides, people are usually surly when doing laundry; its not an activity that anyone really enjoys. The utilitarian furnishings and poor lighting in the underbelly of Wilbur Hall arent very conducive to romantic encounters, either.
The only thing more depressing than sitting motionless in the computer cluster until the automatic neon cubicle lighting goes dark is opening your PO Box and finding it empty. I think Im going to get back into bootleg trading just so I'll always have live, good music waiting for me in my mailbox. Stanford should set up a pen-pal program so our mailboxes never go unfilled. Well match up total strangers on campus, grad students in the School of Education and EE sophomores. Everyone always talks about diversity, but Im really doing something about it.
Someone once came up to me while I was waiting in line for a package at the post office and said that he and a friend wanted to convert the burnt-out CDC building into a whore house called The HoHo. The joke wouldnt work without the existing absurdity of Stanford vernacular.
Does anyone else get flashbacks to Sept. 11 when they cant fall asleep? I always thought Id get around to talking about 9 / 11, but I never did. I've always been of the opinion that everyone should just shut up about it, but the fact that I still think about it means Im guessing other people do too. It hits me at the weirdest times, seeing photographs of the Twin Towers dont bother me, but seeing a shot of the towers through the arch in Washington Square Park does. Giving my heavily opinionated and highly critical explanations of each of the new plans for Ground Zero (go SkyPark!) doesnt bother me, but watching Bushs State of the Union, as people drank to terrorism sent shivers down my spine. I wonder if I'll still be thinking about it when Im 30. I wonder if my kids will ask me about it. I wonder if I'll tell them.
I was hoping to write this column either drunk or hungover, as this week has seen my first Stanford experiences with alcohol. I thought itd be mature and glamorous to be drinking Hemingway-esque mint juleps while writing, or popping Tylenol like tic-tacs to nurse a headache. Unfortunately I failed to get wasted enough this weekend. Im pretending I have a lot more weekends to try.
It scares me how casually I let the weeks and weekends slip through my fingers. The quarter seems a lot shorter when you think of it as 10 Fridays rather than 10 weeks. One of my friends has an even more depressing perspective he figures we have roughly 130 weekends at Stanford over the course of four years, for all the freshman, weve already used up around 10% of them. If you let just one of those Fridays go by, moping around the dorm, its a catastrophic loss.
It saddens me that I wont have a column running the week of Valentines Day. It had always been my secret plan to use my column to leverage a date for V-Day. Am I this desperate? Possibly. But since this is my last column, I wont be able to look for a smart, funny, Radiohead-loving, geekiness-tolerating, well-read Stanford female. Oh well.
Writing this column has been a lot like talking to a cute girl. Afterwards you replay the conversation over and over and wonder what cunning linguistics would have worked better. At least that whats I do.
Dont Dream It. Be It.
Contact David Blackman at blackmad@stanford.edu
Contact David Blackman at blackmad@stanford.edu
