This is What College is About

Warm soda, cold pizza that may or may not adversely affect your digestive system, and a paper at 1 in the morning, preferably a time when your loves have escaped and your friends are in bed. But the music coming out of your computer is smooth and fine and tomorrow's another day, the last day of the week were it not for the 2000-word paper due at noon on Friday, a time your ass isn't used to be up for but you'll make the journey to the other side of campus to drop it off anyway. You could e-mail it the night before, but who in their right mind would sacrifice the hours the early morning offers?

You've got plans for the weekend, but nothing too extravagant--who knows what could come up? Tomorrow you'll hit the dining hall at the same time you always do, lest you upset the delicate order than guarantees you people to sit with. Then you know a guy who knows a guy riding the midnight train into town, which instantly means a trip to the 24-hour diner because it's a school night for some; if it weren't, they'd just get drunk. After the diner, you'll go back to the dorms--a term that's slowly becoming interchanged with the word "home" without you noticing--and work your ass off on the 2000-word essay because you've barely written a word of it and your research is sorely lacking. You might be up all night, but that's okay because aside from turning in the paper, the next day's wide open and you can sleep through half of it if you have to.

Then the clock hits 1:15 and you realize there's less than a month left before you go back to the real home, away from the setting that's slowly but surely replacing it. And that same feeling hits that came when August of the summer before dawned.

That's college. If it sounded like Hell, it's far more wonderful than that, and if it sounded like Heaven don't worry--it's only a notch below. I'll take another bite of the cold pizza and another swig of the warm soda, go back to the paper and know that I wouldn't have it any other way.