Cue the obligatory Green Day because it's time for me to say goodbye to you, dear reader. I hate to turn to one of the all-time graduation clichés and get all sappy on your ass, believe me, emotions are the last thing I like to experience, but this song has signaled the ends of various chapters of our lives, and it's the end of my favorite chapter: backing my ash up at UW-Madison.
I hope you had the time of your life reading about my funny, albeit pathetic, little existence, probably not much different than your own. If you're anything like me, you're sitting in lecture making a to-do list, kind of doing the Sudoku but stopping because you lack the mental capacity to do so by Tuesday, or you're sitting in the union eating one of those huge delicious wraps made for people who strive to be obese. I'll miss those.
I thought maybe I'd write something that didn't acknowledge my departure from the paper, from Madison, and just try to laugh and keep denying. I'd rather do anything than write this last column - it's come to define the very essence of me, it's introduced me to so many interesting people at bars, at Amy's, Plaza, Echo Tap - and of course, it introduced me to so many sweet, nerdy, newsy people at the Cardinal, that windowless cave in Vilas. It's the place where I wrote my first lead, made my first best friend and first started backing my ash up to the dismay and revolt of many.
This publication has given me so much - from the ability to write about sext messages, to using words like fuck"" and ""twat"" on a weekly basis. However, my defining moment as a journalism major was on my last day as state editor of the Cardinal, what I did before writing investigative columns delving into the art of pole dancing, when we published a sketch of a hamburger I drew.
I would never have had all of these experiences if I didn't stumble into the Cardinal's organizational meeting as a freshman, then a virgin, a political moderate and a social leotard. Before then, I hardly imagined I would work at a college paper and actually love it - and not just the semi-attractive males that occasionally worked here before they figured out the Badger Herald pays their staff.
When I came to college, I had a lot of expectations - but being a columnist, especially one whose moniker is derived from a grotesque, catchy song about booties circa 1997, is something I never quite imagined as high school senior, though I was quite fond of Juvenile's touching lyrics.
But that's the thing about college: when you come here, you expect certain things to happen - you'll have the best time of your life, man, and drink beer at the terrace, and you'll make all these friends on your floor, study abroad, and party at Mifflin and Halloween, and you'll eat Ian's pizza, and go to Badger games and by the end of it, you'll have your job and your life together. I had somewhat of a four-year plan ingrained in my head because I'm a planner by nature. I'm always making to-do lists, and I've realized they were for naught, because they haven't helped me keep my life on track. They've helped me graduate in four years, only to be confronted with the future, a future I can only see as far as next week.
Currently, my life resembles my bedroom, and it's a fucking mess. I think if I learned anything after filling out blue books with my numb right hand, studying for endless hours in cages and various coffee shops, is that it's the unexpected that ends up defining who you are.
Life happens when you stop thinking about what's going to happen. The best times I've had weren't planned - watching Obama's inauguration. It was Perkin's breakfasts with my best friends in our going-out outfits. It was spontaneous dance parties with umbrellas on a dead-end street in Ireland. It was walking down State Street, looking toward the Capitol, on a fall day with farmer's market cheese in my knapsack. It was Sundays spent in the library getting nothing much done, watching the Asian kids play hide and seek. It was writing in Espresso Royale, alone, by myself, at peace for once.
I'm not sure where or who I'll be in five years. I'll be happy if I'm not homeless and sharing the sidewalk with Scanner Dan (if that's the case, I hope a sorority adopts me). There are no more great expectations. I can only expect to remember my time here fondly, to keep to laughing without hesitation and to keep sharing my stories. Thank you for laughing with me, and being a chapter in the story of my life.
This is Ashley Spencer's last column. Typing that last sentence made Ashley feel dead. She plans to start blogging at http://backthatash.blogspot.com/, wherever her life takes her. E-mail her at aaspencer@wisc.edu.
