My own summer

Sorry for the lame attempt trying to connect this post with the title track to a Deftones song...

Well my first summer, post-college, has come and gone. The surfin' Lake Michigan, Judy's Campground, Cubs versus Cards games with my friend Dave, roadtrippin' of previous summers when I was officially, "Joe College," has given way to fulltime employment, health & dental benefits, retirement planning as so on. However, looking back it's been a great experience and I'd like to use this time to reflect on this milestone in my life; because in all honesty, I never imagined I'd graduate college.

Just over two and a half years is all it took for me to accomplish my goal, that's it! While that first day of school might have felt like an eternity at the time, I look back on those days as some of the happiest and most rewarding I've ever had. All-night study sessions getting Addlestoned, writing twenty-page research papers on Un-certainty Reduction Theory, etc.  And, I got to hear some amazing stories from some great people I'm proud to call my friends now.

Going back to school in your mid twenties is tough, throw into the mix being a combat vet attending a liberal arts college in the South and it gets even tougher, right?  ...WRONG! Going back to school in your mid twenties, being a combat vet AND attending THE liberal arts college in the South was the greatest thing I could've ever done. I was a real life, flesh and blood stuent, one of them! I had been to places and done things that they only read about in books. I wasn't exiled in the classroom, banished to the far corners of Maybank or Robert Scott Small as I thought. I was no different from the other kids.

Despite the fact that my summer consisted of paying bills and being a grownup once again, it's still been a good one. School might be done in the sense that I've gotten my degree, but I'm not done by a longshot. I'm a writer and I'll be heard!