It’s too bad I’m graduating this week. I just found
out that Bunche Hall has actually always faced the same direction
and was never rotated because it was shining glare onto the 405.
Did you know that?
And someone told me that those aren’t Jim Morrison’s
acid tabs on that locker in Math Sciences. And last week, I got
lost trying to find those secret forbidden tunnels (if they catch
you in them, you’ll get expelled), so I held up my BruinCard
and ““ this will shock you ““ not only did nobody stop to
help me, but several people snickered. What is this, USC?
I thought I knew this place. I thought I had memorized every
inch of it, had attended class in every big lecture hall, had
fallen asleep in every sunny nook. But I guess I hadn’t.
What else don’t I know? What else didn’t I take
advantage of during my time here? What other fabulously interesting
classes could I have skipped? I’ll carry these questions to
my grave. But you don’t have to, fair underclassmen.
Hearken here, Class of 2007. Heed my words, 2008. Stop cutting
out the Sudoku, 2009. If I have one piece of advice to share with
you before my BruinCard and my fat Daily Bruin paycheck (Haha! Just
kidding! The Daily Bruin budget is so tight we have to sell ad
space inside articles! Buy a Mercury Sable!) disappear, it is this:
Squeeze every experience you can out of this place, like hot sauce
onto a plate of flavorless dorm food.
Because you won’t remember any of the classes you took in
10 years (or, frankly, even next week). You won’t recall much
of the knowledge you gleaned here. You won’t spend hours
poring over photo albums of all-nighters in Powell. But that time
you got drunk, broke into Sunset Rec, and went skinny-dipping?
You’ll be telling your children about that until they start
writhing on the floor in disgust.
There are things every Bruin, in good conscience, must do before
they graduate. You must attend Spring Sing, at least once. You must
dance at Dance Marathon (even if you’re dangerously sober).
You must jiggle your way through at least one Undie Run. You must
attend at least one game at the Rose Bowl and one game at Pauley
Pavilion. You must cause one or more Bruin Walk pamphleteers major
physical injury when they get in your face as you sprint to a
midterm.
And then there are the things that are more personal to each
student. Perhaps you’ll most remember the time you and your
friends got written up for taking a shower in the opposite
gender’s bathroom in your dorm. Perhaps the time you had a
boxing night in your apartment, and some guy you didn’t even
know broke his nose. Or when you won a coveted Intramural Champions
T-shirt.
Or maybe what you’ll most remember is exactly where you
were when Jordan Farmar found Luc Richard Mbah a Moute under the
basket for the winning layup against Gonzaga and what it sounded
like when it seemed as if every person in Westwood was hollering
8-claps from every balcony.
It doesn’t matter what you’ll remember. All that
matters is that you remember something. So close the books and open
the bar tab. Trade the dorm room for Diddy Riese. Whether
you’re a freshman with three more years or a graduating
senior with only days to go, there’s still time to make that
money you’ve forked over in parking tickets and skyrocketing
student fees, the best money you’ll ever spend.
The time is going to fly, trust me. It seems like yesterday that
I was a doe-eyed freshman from the exotic jungles of the Midwest,
unsure even of what the word “hella” meant, drinking my
first beer at the last Black Sunday.
Now everyone’s my “brah,” and I can follow up
a round of sake bombing by chasing Jäger shots with grain
alcohol. And it all happened in the blink of an eye. If you
don’t take advantage of the opportunities you’ll have
here to get the kind of drunk where you run into a wall at full
speed because you forgot to stop, you’ll regret it ““
trust me.
So join a club. Write for the Daily Bruin. Preach to the masses
on Bruin Walk. You’ll look back from where I am and be glad
you did. And if you get lost along the road of life, just stop and
hold up your BruinCard. Nobody will help you, and you’ll
probably get laughed at. But hey, at least you’ll have a good
story to tell.
Atherton will see you in the fall, after he fails all his
spring finals. E-mail him at datherton@media.ucla.edu.