Well, it’s six days and counting until I’m officially a college graduate. I keep getting questions saying, “oh my god Derrick, you’re graduating. Are you excited?” Am I excited? Is an elephant heavy? Is the sky blue? Is Halle Berry fine as hell? Hell yes, I’m excited to be graduating. I’m so done with school it’s not even funny. I’m tired of writing essays, doing homework, taking pop quizzes, all of it. But the truth is that the main reason I got tired of college is because it started to remind me of high school and I hated high school. Plus, most of my friends graduated last semester, so I’ve been itching to get out of here. But even though I’m ready to get out here, there are some things I’ll admit that I’ll miss when I leave college.

I’ll miss the fact that I could walk around in sweatpants at any time I wanted and it was seen as okay. I never liked to wear sweatpants outside of my house before college, but when I got here, I went all out. I would wear sweatpants at any given time I wanted. Back in high school, I felt like people were trying to make every day a fashion show by wearing their best outfit. But in college I could dress like a damn hobo and people wouldn’t even pay attention. I wore sweatpants so much in college that people I didn’t even know started to call me “the sweatpants kid." Can you believe that? I got a nickname from wearing sweats so much. If that isn’t cool I don’t know what is.

I’m also going to miss my job at the library. I don’t know about anyone else, but I felt like I had the best job ever. I worked at computer services but it was so easy. I would help people if they had problems with their computers, but most of the time I just got paid to do homework. Plus, on top of that, I could eat at work. I also had some cool coworkers and a kickass boss, so that helped too. Truth be told, I never got tired of going to work there once. That’s how much I loved that job.

I think the best thing I’ll miss about college is the friends I met here. Like I said, college started to remind me so much of high school and I hated it. There was even a time I wanted to drop out because I felt like college wasn’t really offering me anything. But thank god I had my friends here to encourage me to stay. I’ll definitely miss all the fun nights we had going on late night drives, going out to eat, going to the bar or just chilling in our dorm rooms. I made some friends in college that I’ll never forget who I learned lifelong lessons from in the process. You know, college may have not been my favorite time ever, but it did open my eyes to a lot of things in the world that I never would have seen if I didn’t come here. It definitely gave me the cultural shock I needed, let me tell you that. Now people ask me if I’m scared or frightened what’s going to happen to me when I graduate. To be honest, I’m not really scared at all. I’m going to embrace what comes after my graduation because I know this is only the beginning of my life. Peace.