Hootie and I are very different people, and thank God for it. He and his Blowfish asked “Time, why you punish me?” and reflected about his and their time wasted, time walking and not being a friend of his. He didn’t know where he was going because he was out of his mind thinking about time.
Well, as I finish my five years at Northeastern, I’ve had time to reflect on my time here and yes, sometimes time wasn’t a friend of mine. There were times I wanted more time, times time stood still for too long and of course time wasted. At the end of the day though – or at the end of nearly five years of days – time is on better terms with me than it is with Darius Tucker.
Maybe I’m just lucky, but in reflection about my time here, things just always seemed to work out. Paul McCartney wrote it best when he sang about the long and winding road. Life, especially while in college, is just that. Mine was, and of course it had its bumps throughout, but looking back, navigating the road wasn’t that hard.
I was like Richard Dreyfus character, Trotter, in the horse betting movie, “Let it Ride.” His luck never ran out, he had faith that in the end he was going to come out on top and he did. He risked it all by almost throwing it all away each time he bet, but he didn’t just win, he couldn’t lose.
Maybe I didn’t win as big as he, but I’m ending my college career feeling like nobody had it better than me. Maybe there are seniors graduating with a 4.0 GPA. I’m sure there are plenty who had higher paying jobs; co-op jobs and I’m positive, being a journalism major, that plenty of my peers who sit with me in the FleetCenter on the morning of June 15 will start with a higher salary than me at their first job.
I don’t mean to sound bravado, but I couldn’t care less. Good for them. Just like Trotter, I made bets and I won. I made a bet on who my friends would be, where I would live, what type of social life I would lead and, most meaningful, who my girlfriend would be, and in every instance I won. No, not all was perfect, but where parts of my life weren’t perfect, I have few regrets.
I think the key to doing this was not sweating the small stuff and keeping the attitude that things were always going to work themselves out in the end. Two summers ago, friends of mine laughed at me as I kept proclaiming myself and two roommates’ apartment problem was going to fix itself. In short, our lease was expiring and the on-campus housing we were expecting never came through. I kept saying “I have faith in the system,” but all my faith rewarded us with was a place at Mount Ida. We didn’t take it and moved into an extra bedroom in a friend’s apartment no bigger than a walk-in closet. Three people in one room wasn’t great for comfort, but it was the most fun I had in college. With any other attitude than the three of us had, we would have never made it.
I was also able to get through the biggest challenge of my college career, my position at The News, with the same attitude. I’m of the belief that if someone doesn’t believe that there is anyway they can fail, than they won’t. It is a pretty ignorant attitude to take, but it worked for me.
In a couple of weeks I will be out of school with no job, no place to live and no plans in general, but I have given it little thought. It’s not because I don’t worry about it, it’s more that I have other things on my plate. Granted, time will be up in less than a month, but I’ll deal with it then because tomorrow is just another day and time is on my side, oh yes it is.