By Professor Jim Wilcox, Guest Writer
In this day of choices – how we want a television program to end, how we want to travel while still having a buffet available, what color our new car can be – it’s now time for me to attempt a column in which you, the reader, can choose which topic you’d like me to write about.
Here are your choices:
o Gossip from the faculty lounge
o My summer vacation
o My Christmas Break
o My college GPA
o If I knew then what I know now
Just fill in the dot of the topic you’d like me to write about, using a #2 pencil. Wait five minutes and that topic will appear. (If this doesn’t work, quit trying. It won’t fix itself.)
Five minutes…………
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Three minutes………..
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One minute………..
•If I knew then what I know now.
I know now what I knew then: you would choose this topic because A) you are full of anxiety about a current crisis; B) your freshman comp assignment next week is “If I knew then what I knew now”; C) you have no moral objection to plagiarism; D) your parents’ advice just ain’t working for you.
(See there? More choices)
Lesson one: “Love at first sight” applies only to pizza toppings. I must have had 14 sightings of 14 “perfect matches” with 14 “perfect women” that turned out to be little more than 14 FEMA disaster relief sites.
Lesson two: Living with a roommate is no training at all for living with a spouse. My roommate used to agree with me once in a while. And Al never hid my keys, wallet, glasses or winter sandals.
Lesson three: Nobody has asked me about my college GPA in the last 40 years. Striving for grades every semester put me in the hospital every Spring Break. I’d like to have those four weeks back.
Lesson four: I now know the best music ever written and performed was written and performed during my college years. (You’ll think the same thing one day.)
Lesson five: Bad eating habits learned in college often begin a lifetime of bad eating habits. Midnight Chinese food-runs in our VW Beetle during finals week are now just the “midnight Chinese runs.”
Lesson six: At some point, reading will once again be fun.
Lesson seven: Tests never stop. They just get more important.
Lesson eight: Noses and earlobes never stop growing. Hair and hip joints do.
Lesson nine: Class reunions are very frightening.
Lesson ten: College years are the best of your life.