Column: Final countdown

By Shouger Merchant

My last column, in 2004, was an appeal to vote a certain way in the 2004 presidential election. This is a plea of a different kind.

Having just returned from two and a half months of pretending to be a working woman as a Dow Jones business reporter at the Columbus Dispatch, I came to two conclusions. Being a journalist was an amazing experience. The real world, however, was not that glamorous. There are the overdue bills, meager paychecks, long hours of work, few hours of sleep, frozen food for dinner, minimal social life only on weekends and the ironing of formal clothes every morning while your eyes are half open only to burn yourself in the process.

Although there are plenty of things I appreciated about Ohio’s capital, there are many things that I will not miss terribly. I will not miss the time I sat at a gas station for two hours looking for people who would comment on gas deals. I don’t think I would miss staying at work until late at night on deadline for a breaking story either.

I probably will not miss the anti-abortion lobbyist group that circled the downtown area with vivid pictures of fetuses being aborted. Nor will I miss the religious groups handing out daily leaflets that read explicit statements such as, “Get straight, don’t swerve. It’s not too late; God says convert.”

But I will miss the wonderful people I met, who I may or may not see again. I will miss the daily lunches with a group of friends at Potbelly Sandwiches, which we frequented so often that we received treats such as free shakes, cookies, and finally a Potbelly t-shirt (hah). I will miss the movie theaters where they serve beer with popcorn. I will also miss the malls, the restaurant variety, the weekend festivals, and I will miss seeing actual buildings that are taller than Presidential Towers. And yes, I already miss all the journalistic flexibility that we were given as interns: to be able to explore and write about topics that people would never dream to touch, just because we could.

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In retrospect, there isn’t a thing I would change about my summer. Yet, I insist, the real world is overrated. I wonder what all the fuss is about. What was all that chatter about the ‘brilliant feel of being a nine-to-fiver’? That high lasted me two weeks, ending shortly after I realized formal clothes can get boring.

But I will admit that although playing grown-up made me age mentally, it also offered me invaluable insights into the world of adulthood. It gave me a glimpse of what my life might look like a couple of years from now. It gave me a chance to investigate a career I desired since I was six.

And it made me appreciate college more.

In my time here, I have met many people, whose stock reply to senioritis is always, “I can’t wait to get out of here and get into the real world.” I want to get there too, but for now I’m glad to be hanging around here in sheltered Chambana for a year more. On my last day at work, a veteran reporter said to me, “Have a great last year, it only goes downhill

after college.”

Well if he is right, we are all about to fall off the map. So class of 2006, this is our year. My plea is to live it up and enjoy every waking (or drunk) moment of the next year. When I glanced at the freshmen marching in for orientation, it doesn’t seem like very long ago that I was among them. I breezed into college with all these goals and aspirations. And while I might have accomplished some, others remain unfulfilled. So, I pledge to do everything I never did in the past three years. I don’t ever want to write a column that starts with the words, “In college, I regret that I didn’t …”