What do you know?
I'm down to 40 some-odd class hours until I graduate. That's about 5 whole weeks. There have been times past when I have contemplated if I deserved my diploma. You know this, I've written about it. Now I say just staying awake for the remaining 40 hours should earn me a certificate or medal of honor or something. I am being completely serious.

In high school I made friends with these people called "burn outs", now I think of myself as a different kind of burn out altogether. 18 years of school will do that for you. If I had spent 18 years in some other area or vocation, like say Waffle House, people would consider me an expert. But, Oh no, Not with school. I'm only about to enter the real world. Supposedly.

Lately, a lot of people ask me what I'm going to do after graduation. I say, "work". I am eager to work because during the tenure of my college career I have had trouble getting a j-o-b. I put in tons of applications. I even made calls and whatnot. Those who have been willing to hire me, for the most part, have required me to work during the day. This, of course, conflicts with my class schedule. As of May 14 this will no longer be an obstacle. I anticipate this with gladness.

Anyway, people ask this question about my plans following graduating and after I say "work" they sometimes say, "You're joining the rest of us." I despise that expression more than any other, particularly coming from the mouths of those who have not been to college. You'll never hear me act like any kind of college education distinguishes a person as a more superior human being. That isn't the point.

The point is that they personally have not experienced this. They seem to be under these assumptions about college. They seem to think of it as a stage before real life really begins. Oh no, They said that with high school. Next thing you know they'll be telling me becoming a parent is "the real world" and then it'll be going to the old folks' home. I don't know what tomorrow holds, but do they know what my today holds? Preposterous. Usually, they don't have much means of discerning how ready or unprepared I am for the next stage of life. Just assumptions that's all.

Life begins at conception, but neither is a baby grown. I won't say I'm all grown up and hold the key to all the mysteries of adulthood, but neither do my parents and their folks didn't either. I can handle tomorrow with what I've learned so far. I have learned to manage calendars and clocks, confrontation and bigger things like grief, apathy, mortality, and feeling divorced from God. Maybe these aren't the biggest, but they are big. No? I don't know how I'll feel about the pain next time it should strike, but by the grace of God I will work through this foes that attempt to vanquish me. I will survive.

I gotta go now, the real world bullies are trying to take my lunch money.