Despite all the tests, quizzes, labs, papers, and final preparations that you are going through right now, there will not be another time in your life like this. You will not live so close to so many friends, sharing such a unique living space again. You will not change and grow so much as an individual in such a short space of time again. You will not find new interests, or have the time to pursue them, in the same way you do now.
You will not be this young again.
You will not have health, the future, youth, and time all on your side (at least simultaneously) again. Future self, you have the entire everything at your fingertips. You are so blessed for this; so, do not sqaunder your Time. (“The stuff life is made of” as Benjamin Franklin said.) When you work hard, work hard; it will come to fruition sooner or later. And when you play hard, play hard. Ignore the messages outside of yourself saying “value life”; find your own inner truth - the reasons you want to make so much of all that you have.
That said, and returning to my present self, I would like to point out that I am single-handedly bringing back the peace sign. The previous phrase has significant mileage in nostalgia and puns. Furthermore in the next week, I will be performing experiments on guppies, and then analyzing the results using some statistical test. The fact that applying stats to this inane study is supposed to make it valid disturbs me.
One more thing: there will never be another time in my life that I have to pay 2 dollars per load of laundry - ever.
Dayle is an interesting character. Resident of fifth floor since my first year here, he is an institution around Cretin Hall. While I can’t fully disclose the many facets of his personality, I believe he is from Jamaica or somewhere geographically close - he has this really cool accent. I also learned the sport of cricket from him one early Saturday morning last year. I played with people still slightly tipsy from the night before, marveling the whole time at the subtleties of such a simple game. Dayle has always surprised me, intially from his accent, to his smoking, to his position as a senior contributing writer on our school’s newspaper.
He’s a big tough guy who keeps his cards close to chest; I wouldn’t want to anger him in a dark alley any night. Indeed, I wouldn’t want to anger him period. So, one afternoon this past week, I had Enya playing in my room with my door open. Let me first extrapolate on my corner room’s acoustics: my ceilings are steeply raked as they are the flip side of the roof. Because of this, they aim sound down the hall so well that I can listen to music playing in my room while taking a shower (3 rooms down the hall) without turning it up loud. So Dayle, hearing the ethereal music wafting down the hall comes down to my room; “I was wondering who was playing that.” I turned suddenly at his comment, seeing him in the doorway. Suddenly I wished I hadn’t been playing music. “He probably hates this ‘new age crap’ and is going to toss me and my speakers out the window,” I thought. To my surprise, he took a different conversational route, “that shet rocks mahn,” he observed, his words filtered through his accent. Relieved, I agreed.
I once wrote something like this: “Everybody is truly Good at Something. Always remember this. Keep an open mind when you encounter strangers or even people you know well. Especially people you know well. It’s not possible to know everything about somebody. People will always surprise you.” This statement, written when I was younger and wise only be dumb luck, has continued to prove itself to be true.
The idea was not to grow out my hair. Seven months ago (during my last haircut), I did not think it would be spring before I cut the locks springing from my skull. That said, fall gave way to winter, which began to yield to spring, and during that time my hair continued to grow, unaccosted by the barber’s shears/scissors. The resulting forest/afro of hair got rather curly in the end.
With the warming weather, I consulted many opinions, and soon realized that I had to cut the dangerously thick locks before my head overheated in the approaching hot weather of late spring and early summer.
Thankfully, said haircut performed well today, allowing my head to actually breathe in the eXtreme 81 degree heat (I capitalized the ‘x’ so you know how extreme the heat was). If anybody from south of here is laughing, you should - Minnesota winters are cold, dudes. However, this makes the springs and summers around here heavenly - you value what you frequently lose. Oh, any good haircut stories? Leave ‘em in the comments.
