I’m leaving. I’m going away. I’m dying graduating. I spent 4 years here on this stupid fucking campus. I’ve gotten stupid drunk on weekdays. I’ve made friends and lost them. I’ve been here at AMP since the dawn of the dinosaurs. I work a student job. I eat, sleep, and breathe this campus. I am one of the slim minority of students at this school who truly, actually, love it. And, I say this with love, you all are not serious people.

Please understand, this piece is petty and vindictive and entirely self-indulgent. But I have learned many things about Being Normal (trademark pending, although, for some reason, the Patent Office doesn’t want to give it to me) from my time here at UTD. A lot of you Comets, um, didn’t learn those things. So here they are! In a numbered list, like a 38-year-old Buzzfeed employee. You may think to yourself, “Mysterious, nameless writer whose name and picture definitely aren’t on the page, I already know all of this.” Awesome. I’m so happy for you. Act like it. 

1. Sometimes, you are wrong. Not in the “Oh, I got a question wrong” sense. In the sense that you are going to hurt people for reasons that are not very good. You are going to be stubborn and selfish. You cannot get through this without hurting people. You might think this one doesn’t apply to you, but it does. The more you consider yourself a good person, the more you need to remember this.
2. It is okay to be wrong. Release yourself from the need to always be right. One of the great curses of Christian ideology permeating the world is that, in our heads, we imagine some great ticker measuring the good we do against the bad. We think about “how bad” some sin or another is. There’s a search for the quantization of suffering, but the truth is, absent of belief, it’s all just people. It’s all just people. You’re allowed to fuck up and hurt people. It doesn’t add to some invisible tally of evilness or bad-dudeness.
3. Conflict is natural. Because we are human beings who are not psychic, we do not always agree on things. All relationships encounter conflict. All of them. What makes you who you are is what you do after the conflict. Know how to apologize.
4. You can’t fix everything, and you shouldn’t. Not every conflict needs to be resolved. Not every relationship needs to be maintained. The best relationships are the ones you decide are worth fighting for. If you don’t fuck with Kelly from Gen Chem, don’t apologize for forgetting to take notes for her.
5. Everything will get complicated over time. No friend group remains unchanged. People change. Circumstances change. People are not who you think they are, or who they think they are. Sometimes you will have to watch people you care about be changed by something out of your control. And sometimes, you will watch one good newspaper turn into two mediocre ones. C’est la vie. Be careful about getting involved, but don’t be afraid of it.
6. Everyone is waiting for someone to tell them what to do. There are a million leadership programs. Fuck those. Listen to me right now: if you trust that you know what to do, other people will too. Authority belongs to those with the stones to take it.
7. Yes, you should date. Everyone who told/tells you to dump your partner from high school is right, but you should give it a few more months. Get one good last summer in, then put yourself out there. I promise you’ll be surprised.
8. People are happy to see people who are happy to see them. Smile authentically and without restraint.
9. There are two kinds of people. People who know they are alive, and people who don’t. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re probably in the former category. I prescribe reading a weird book and questioning your sexuality a little. Knowing that you are alive makes you a sadder person, but it also makes you more interesting. Take what you can get.
10. Not everyone has to be funny. You may not be funny. If no one ever laughs at your jokes, consider getting into, I don’t know, Mycenaean history and having abs. I wouldn’t know. This one isn’t a problem I have.
11. Be versatile. Fellow Tumblrinas, avid “The Amazing Digital Circus” fans, those with Carrds, and everyone else in the vague demographic I’m trying to gesture at: Get one normie hobby or interest. It will serve you massive social capital. The year I became a Swiftie was the year I finally cracked the secrets of the neurotypical community.
12. You are not the person you think you are. There are parts of you that are glaringly obvious to others that you cannot see. That’s okay, just be flexible with the person you think you are. You are wet clay unformed, and you are also the potter whose responsibility it is to shape that clay.
13. There is nothing worth giving up being weird for. Stand in the middle of the sidewalk staring at a squirrel. Take your shoes off and dip your toes in the fountain in Chess Plaza. Laugh loudly and often and make bad jokes to strangers in elevators. Be strange and off-putting and stare openly. It’s better than missing the world around you.
14. This school doesn’t have to suck. There is a party school here if you go looking for it. There is an imaginative liberal arts school here if you go looking for it. Home is all over this campus, but it isn’t in your dorm or your parents’ house. UTD has many problems, but don’t blame it for being boring just because you gave up before you ever got started.

Got it? Good. Awesome. Have fun. That sounds snarky, but I mean it. I hope that on a beautiful day you’ll walk through the magnolias, gossiping with your friends, and remember in that moment that you’ll miss it one day. This is your time to fuck up and fall down and learn to get back up again. In other words, please, please, do not be this annoying after you graduate.

Go Comets. I mean that too.

-E