Next weekend, I will graduate. My classmates and I will stride boldly out of the Kohl Center and shout \Look out world, here we come with our degrees! Prepare to submit to our savage and fickle whims, for we are college graduates!""
Maybe some of us will be subtler. The point is, we will have finished a significant phase.
And we will romanticize our college years. We will go to bars, sit hunched over, smile reflectively and say, ""If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing."" This will be a lie. There is always something worth going back and changing.
My college career was a resounding personal triumph, but I'm not going to say that if I could replay it I wouldn't tweak a couple of things.
If I could turn back time four years, I'd befriend some people in Memorial Library computer lab. Specifically, I'd pal around with a group of 10 or so men who seem to live there. Without even understanding their language, which I believe is Chinese, I know hanging out with them would be fun.
As I compose this column, they are standing outside the door playing what looks like a cross between kickboxing and phone tag. They are laughing hysterically and two of them are preparing to smoke their third cigarette in the past 15 minutes. Their wild, operatic laughing makes me think they are privy to an outrageously funny joke that doesn't translate to English. I'm sure if I had made friends with them, they could have found a way to communicate this wonderful joke to me. That would have made my incalculable library time so much more entertaining.
While their friendship would have eased the tedium of the library, it wouldn't have helped me avoid the main thing I wish I hadn't done at UW. If I had my choice, I'd go back and stay clear of tear gas.
Swallowing most of the contents of a Madison Police Department gas bomb at the 2002 State Street Halloween demolition orgy inflicted the most unpleasant sensation I have ever felt. That's pretty meaningful, since I've had a concussion, broken my right foot, my left arm, two ribs and two fingers, swallowed an open safety pin and seen Michael Bolton in concert.
If I had to do it again, I wouldn't go to State Street at 3 a.m. in the name of ""contact journalism."" I'd finish my pizza, change out of my Paul Bunyan-in-a-pink-tutu costume and go to bed.
Or upon seeing the canister hit my foot, this time I would run instead of thinking ""How cute. The police are shooting more smoke bombs. I think I'll stand here and let it erupt on my pantleg.""
I wish I hadn't been tear-gassed. Now, when I have grandchildren and they ask me ""Grandpa, have you ever become explosively ill and wept uncontrollably in a public park while dressed as a lumberjack-ballerina?"" I will have to say ""yes.""
But aside from those two historical revisions, there isn't much I would change. If I had to go back to my senior year in high school and re-choose a university, I would go to UW again.
I'm done at this school and I'm done at the Cardinal. I wish you luck and uninterrupted success. Thank you for reading, it has been my honor to write for you. May the sun shine on your path and the wind blow hard away from you when the gas canister breaks open.
