Oregon Trail, blasphemy, and the like...

It has been quite some time since we have communed over this table - this expanse of html script and pixellated screens. For my absence I do apologize in the most sincere way.

Nonetheless, there are times when I miss you. I do, really. I sit in my boxers and think about the distance, the seemingly unbreachable distance and oh, I yearn. Do I ever yearn! However, at long last, my chance has arisen from the depths, like a sprig of grass stretching and bursting forth from the cracks in the sidewalk.

I have realized lately that college is in large part counterproductive because no one, and I mean no one should be subjected to this grueling pace. I say grueling pace in the way of Oregon Trail. The simile lies in the setting section of O.T., you can choose your pace. I, in my youth, would always try to expedite my excursion through the Lewis and Clark country by choosing the grueling pace option. This was great fun for me, as my computer time was limited to half an hour and only if the O.T. gods were shining down on you, and you were getting after it with a grueling pace could you finish in one half hour. However, with this frantic pace came a few downsides. The primary of which being that I was always much more likely to be stopped and have a note that says, "Reginald has died of dysentery" upon which time I was supposed to just continue on. Perhaps two miles later Ferdinand would die of poison ivy. This is the life of a man on the frontier who happens to be moving at a grueling pace. Perhaps, this analogy doesn't make sense to most, but to me there have never been two oxen more appropriately yoked. College is the final frontier, it is that journey to the Oregon coast, upon which time you can float down the Dulles and arrive (supposedly), safely home. This is the time when we gruel, and we grunt. Hoping, wishing that everything in our wagon won't be dead by the time we get where we are going. The counter productivity comes in here. It comes in right before you are going to get to the float down the river. It comes right before finals. It comes, inevitably it comes. The Oregon Trail version says "Rufus has died of Gonorrhea," the real life version goes a little something like this, "Oh hello friend, here I am, looming right here like Frankenstein" and you kindly look at Frankenstein and smile half heartedly as though to say, you're not that ugly. Then he prods a little more, and he says, "hey I'm here, you know me, I'm your Brit.Lit. final and you haven't paid a lick of attention to me all year, well it's my time in the sun sonny, because I own your world for the next two weeks." then you look back with a little fear and then start to walk away - at first slowly as not to arouse suspicion but as he stays with you this turns into a full out sprint. Unfortunately you can't escape from him and you end up in the library trying to conquer him. This conquering requires nights, seriously nights of no sleep where the only sustenance comes from the fountain of youth, which can also be called Starbucks. Here we are, supposedly learning about the syntax of Chaucer's tales and all we can see is this huge green monster with screws coming out of its neck. Learning is what we're here for, and learning is what our professors preach; however by calling college a learning environment they are molesting all that has ever really engaged a student. College is a poor excuse to bottle up young, imaginative people, and turn them into mundane followers. It is a great excuse to force feed facts rather than skills. We are spending our days running from mundane numbers and ideas and our nights cramming them into overstuffed brains. We are spending every waking moment trying to evade this system of learning called college, until Frankenstein comes a-calling and we finally submit and drink this knowledge like hard liquor, simply so that we can regurgitate it out on our test. Then, we turn around and we are done -- we get to the Dulles and we look inside of our covered wagon to find nothing left but the skeletal systems of Reginald, Ferdinand, and Rufus; a couple of boxes of shotgun shells and a few pounds of animal fat. Slowly, we begin to float on down the river with nothing left and we careen into the treachery that we once so longed for. We slam, uninhibited into a land mass known as adulthood that we are thoroughly unready for. So here we come, Frankenstein, Oregon, Hitler...as we stare down your cannons we will continue to bob and weave like "the world's greatest" himself and eventually, hopefully we will diagnose college as the liar it is, and begin to learn instead of get drunk. We can turn back that dial from "grueling pace" to "sunday stroll" and Reginald, Ferdinand, and Rufus may all join us on our voyage.