There comes a point in every English-studying college student?s life when he or she must sit down and think to himself or herself: ?Why is it so grammatically incorrect to use the word ?they? every once in a while??
However, this is not the topic of this column. The paragraph above is called a ?blind lead,? which is a news-writing term to describe an opening paragraph that must be led around by a large dog.
Haha! That?s not true either. I?m just doing what professional journalists call ?wasting valuable space in the newspaper.? So let?s get right to the point, shall we?
There comes a point in every English-studying college student?s life when he or she must sit down and think to himself or herself: ?Do I really have to drag all of this stuff back home??
I raise this issue because that?s exactly what I?m doing. I?m sitting in my room, looking at all of the stuff that I have amassed over the past nine months.
It seems like only yesterday I was writing a column about how I was putting off packing to move into college, and now I?m writing one about moving back out.
Actually, that column was published 10 months ago: ?College move looms on the horizon.?
At that point, I hadn?t even unpacked all of my graduation stuff: ?Piled outside of my bedroom door are two large boxes that contain mass quantities of graduation-related memorabilia. This includes?David Vogel Historical Relics from my display table at the reception, cards, gifts, my cap and gown and, yes, my diploma is even buried in there.?
This is still the case, except those boxes have somehow migrated from outside to inside my room. The contents, however, remain untouched.
In that column, I also mentioned how was preparing myself for college life ?by writing this at about 1:45 a.m.? I happen to be writing this one at almost 1:45 also.
There are some differences, I must say, between that moving-out column and this moving-back-in column.
For example, the objects I have to take back are slightly different than what I was considering taking with me.
Ten months ago I said, ?Books are a college must-have, but my literary collection consists mostly of books by Dave Barry? I would like to see the grade I would receive after citing (him) as a resource in a research paper.?
I am happy to report that my personal ?library? has become slightly more academic literature-oriented. My shelves now contain Ernest Hemingway?s ?A Farewell to Arms? and ?In Our Time,? Rudy Wiebe?s ?Peace Shall Destroy Many,? Edward Albee?s ?Who?s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,? ?The Essential Tails and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe,? and Dan Brown?s ?Angels and Demons.?
Of those, the most entertaining but least scholarly is ?Angels and Demons.? But it?s the only one to have a movie released in the last several days, which warrants it as important.
I also cited some other objects in my room that were not worth taking to college, including a bowling pin inscribed with the words ?Gutterball King.?
(Please note the intelligent-sounding use of the word ?cited.? Apparently I?m paying the school several thousand dollars a semester so I can sound smart in my column.)
In the same spirit, I have acquired several items that I?m not sure I want to take back home.
These include shot glasses from Las Vegas and Santa Cruz, a Hannah Montana contact lenses case, a digital conversion box that ended up making no difference in the TV?s output, a cheap coffee maker that collects dust with more efficiency than it makes coffee, a Tabor College display sign with the old pillar logo, thus making it ?illegal? for official campus use and several pounds of class notes, note books and packets that I will probably never look at again, but will also not throw away for fear that ?I might need that someday.?
It?s sad, really, that I will be putting all of this in my trunk and taking it home with me. And it has to go in my trunk, due to the large quantity of new T-shirts, which will be in my back seat. If America ever goes into The Great T-shirt Recession, I will be responsible for most of the bailouts.
A lot of college students end up throwing things away instead of trying to get them back home. Just tonight I heard talk of going ?Dumpster diving? for goods that other students will inevitably throw out as Finals Week?or Reading Week or Dead Week or whatever else you want to call it?comes to a close.
I won?t throw anything away; I don?t have the option. Being only a few blocks from home, I have the opportunity to make multiple trips back and forth. In fact, I will probably be the one doing the Dumpster diving for even more stuff I won?t want to drag back.
However, I must first go see ?Angels and Demons.? But only for its literary value, you know.
