May 2004 Archives

My last big academic achievement.

Well, I've finally done it folks. I'm graduating college this Saturday!

In 1995 I first set foot on a college campus. Mind you, it was just to avoid going to high school--I had managed to convince my parents to let me to drop out of school and enroll in the local community college instead. My little brother and I took a programming class (in Visual Basic) together, and I took three other classes as well. My brother--who was 13 at the time and had to get a waiver to be allowed into the class--got an A+ and I got an A. Somehow the difference between those two grades allowed him to become an elite programmer and me to struggle to achieve the technological momentum to dial the phone to call him for tech support.

The programming class aside, I made it through my first semester of college and went on to an East Coast liberal arts college where Fran was my roommate, the students would wear Prada to work in the printmaking studio and sexuality was as fluid as what I was puking up nearly every night.

The next school was a few years later. I enrolled in New York City's School of Visual Arts. An entertaining time, to be sure. I only was taking one class in Screenprinting and living in the dorms. Somehow though, I found this too challenging and only made it to class two times (but I stayed in the dorms for the rest of the summer). This was the glorious time that I became obsessed with karaoke and met Leija, who used me as her photography subject way too often.

I went to another college in New York for a while, where I took English classes and wrote papers about gang tattoos and had a larger numbers of personal problems that didn't help with my schoolwork. Then, I went on to CUNY--aka grade 13 of New York City. It was filled with retarded sophomores and had a drunk Valedictorian.

Finally, with the help of many of my readers here at shutitdown who sponsored my college applications and supported me through the process (thanks always to Compulsive who sponsored the "winning" application!) I made it to my current liberal arts enclave, and sixth college, where I've written a bunch of papers and caused a lot of trouble because of my love of dead white men.

And now, after nine long years of college I am graduating with a useless degree in English literature. It's honestly pretty exciting, if only because it took me so long. Now I just have to decide what to do with the rest of my life--but I'm hoping to put off the decision until after a summer of freedom. I've already started making tearful on craigslist for frequent flier miles so I can go to Europe with Fran in July. Anyway, thanks again for all of the support through this nightmare, and if you have any suggestions for what I should be using this degree for, that would be excellent.