Late August is officially back to school season. The endless Target adds peddling folders repping whatever cartoons are hot in the streets these days and emotional insurance commercials showing parents dropping their child off to a 4 year bender are inundating our lives. Sitting on the other side of that fence now is a bizarre feeling that I wasn’t quite prepared for.

The nights leading up to graduation back in May while they were the final pages in my collegiate book never really felt like it. There weren’t really any tearful nights reminiscing about how much we’ll miss this place or whatever cliche was supposed to happen. Despite our best efforts too, one of the last nights before the last few of our friend group moved out we held #Cryfest2k18. A beautifully depressing gathering where about 8 guys got together in our living room, turned off the lights and played every sad song we could think of for the occasion. We had some heavy hitters going too. Come Join the Murder, Hallelujah, and the dumb Vitamin C song every group of high school chicks cries too at the end of senior year. After over an hour of this attempt at real emotion no tears were shed, in fact we all thought it was pretty funny because of how ridiculous and over the top it was. So we then decided to go back to our roots, kicked on Sherryl Crow’s all-time banger Soak Up the Sun, cranked that bitch up to 11 and smashed all the glass bottles we had accrued on our mantle from the past two years of drinking. We christened our apartment for the next generation of stories like a ship being sent out to sea for a new voyage.

A seismic shift has now occurred though. For the past 16 years those damn commercials signaled the return to school like the Beacons of Gondor calling upon the Riders of Rohan to come aid in battle. Now that I no longer answer to those beacons I find myself feeling those emotions we were supposed to find in that dark room back in May.

Here’s a tip for everyone out there still in college. When you graduate, don’t stay local. You might think that it wouldn’t be that bad and might actually be kinda sweet especially if you’ll still have some buddies at school to hang with. Let me tell ya, it’s not. I grew up in Syracuse, went to SU, and now work in the area so maybe it’s all compounding with the desire to leave the hometown. Yesterday I was working on a job site just a few blocks from campus and had to drive by my freshman dorm and apartment from junior and senior year to get there. It was one of the most surreal and depressing things I’ve experienced in my life.

Driving by Shaw Hall and seeing the endless line of cars pulling up to move in those blissfully ignorant 18 year old freshman bastards, I was blown away by how that was actually me 4 years ago. I wanted to pull over, shave my beard, and pick a random couple to call Mom and Dad in the hopes that maybe there’d be an empty bed waiting for me in 457 like there was back in 2014.

I’d like to take a moment here for anyone who might be thinking “just let it go you bum.” With all due respect, fuck off. If you’re not finding yourself missing it and wanting just one more victory lap then you definitely didn’t do college right. These days I have a 50 minute commute to an 8-5, 5-figures worth of debt suddenly attached to my name, and a front row seat to a life I once lived like some real life version of A Christmas Carol. There I was boozing on week nights without any regard for tomorrow, had 3 day weekends, and was pretending to be some some knock off Dan Patrick covering Syracuse Football and Basketball for a student radio station. You bet the stick shoved up your ass I would rather keep that train rolling. Let me feel my feelings damnit.

For now though I, like many of you, am stuck toiling away in my cube longing to have one more shot at it. I’ll probably take a few swings for old times sake, I do have some friends who are still in school, but it just won’t be the same. So for now raise a happy hour special domestic draft to the good times and maybe share a few bits of advice to someone younger so that they get the most out of their time.

I’ll start with a little story from early on in my freshman year.

About a month in a my friend Matt from high school who is a year older and went to a smaller college near by asked me to come meet him at DJs. A bar next to Syracuse’s campus which will let you in at 18 but gives you the mark of shame Xs on your hands signaling the bartender to not serve you. Really though you could pass as being 21 if you showed them a library card. This place is the goddamn Wild West where no laws actually apply. At the time I didn’t know how loose DJs interpreted “legal form of identification” so I got Xd up like a mutha fucka. Matt had a shitty fake so he could buy booze, when I met him in DJs he immediately handed me a beer which of course I proceed to drink (whoa look at the hot shot over here drinking beer in a bar). A bouncer sees the beer, sees the Xs on my hands, comes up to me and says “you’re out.”

I’m not a bitch so I toughen up, puff out my chest and defiantly say “okay” and leave. I was in the bar for maybe 5 minutes. Leaving the bar a homeless man walks up to me and gives me some story about how it’s his birthday and he’s just trying to buy a bottle of Jack and asks if I had a couple bucks. Obviously I’m hammered off of my sip of Bud Light but really I just admire the honesty of “hey man I’m just trying to get fucked up.” So I toss him a couple bucks for his troubles. Welp, he then puts his arm around me, tells me I’m a good dude and asks “yo you smoke?” Before I can say anything he pulls out a small bag of crack from his hat and offers it to me for $10. Crack rocks are no more than 6 inches from my face at this point. My eyes get wide because now shit has just gotten very real and say “I gotta go” and book it back to my dorm to go to bed and ponder what the fuck just happened.

So the moral of the story kids, is to make sure you have a good fake and as Nancy Reagan said, just say no.

God I’m gonna miss it.

Holla at ya boy

Twitter: @LlFired