The last day of the first week of the last semester. Wake up with a hangover, classes, gym, and lunch with friends; help out with a table at an event. The last day of the week was full of things I will not do after I graduate. It was a full day, and it felt like being in school more than it has ever before. Among my career as a college student, I have often found myself looking back at choices I made and sometimes question them and ponder what might have been. Make no mistake, I have no regrets, but sometimes it is odd what you can find in the world of past possibilities.

Today, however, something happened that answered a question I have gotten more than the rest. “Do you like your major?” I noticed something when I moved onto campus the first time. I had traveled hours by plane and by car, but I had been planning what I wanted to study for a while since before graduating high school. Sadly when I got accepted to Endicott, they really didn’t have a 3D Animation major that would maybe end me as a video game artist or animator. However, I still knew I wanted to dive into tech, so I had my major, Computer Science, picked out for me months in advance; I really had no intention of switching at any point. My mistake was assuming everyone knew what they wanted to study, but it soon became clear that declaring a major happens after your first taste of college as a freshman, and that after a while one kind of finds themselves comfortable in a certain area.

Whenever people would ask me what being a Computer Science major, I would go off explaining how talking about how computers work and how they were created blows my mind. Or I would talk about how this major brings together a multitude of people that you thought would not be all students of the same school, whereas nerds before were categorized and judged, now it is more of a group of people that are just interesting in any way you look at them. Sometimes I would talk about how professors are not all too orthodox in the whole educational thing, and that they were more like older people that we hung out with, only that they would sometimes make your life hell with stressful shit like midterms or projects, and of course the horror that is finals week. I would brag to friends about how I would rarely have to write essays, but I guess it was a double edged sword because I don’t really hear much around campus about how long someone has gone without sleep trying to get their code to finally stop screaming “Error!” every damn second.

However, it wasn’t until today that I understood why I am so glad I stuck with the major, and why this whole time, even though I had gone through stress that tested my very soul, I would still look forward to class, professors, and my peers. Usually, all of the students hang around in what we call the “Computer Science Lounge”, or just Lounge for short. In between the three offices of the main computer science professors, lies a bitchin’ area stocked with an arcade machine, pinball machine, Dance Dance Revolution pads, giant TV, computers for anyone to use, mini fridge, couches to finally collapse into as you fail to stay up for an all-nighter. During the day, students just chill there, shoot the shit and basically either have mental breakdowns before a test or swarm someone’s office as they try to get as much time with them during the famous office hours.

I had been done with my first class at nine in the morning and was headed over to the lounge to quickly try and get my homework done for my next class at eleven that I had not done the night before. So there I am, unpacking my stuff, ready to let the bullshit flow and write a bunch of papers, when I see someone from the major pull out an N64 and browse through the games. Long story short, after much enthusiastic questioning by my part, we agree to play Mario Kart and see just how pissed either of us would get. That is when it happened. Two of my professors see us setting it up, pull up chairs, and tell my friend to bring out two more controllers.

I was stunned. I never thought I would actually play Mario Kart with my professors. There we were, all four, battling it out 90s style, just absolutely turning on each other, hitting each other with shells and bananas, and taking first place at the last second as one cheers and all others complain and scream at the TV. I did not do homework. I played Mario Kart with a friend and my professors, and it was fucking great. ~ad astra ultraque