The Online Reflector

By Dan Friend
Managing Editor

I won’t grandstand to my fellow ’08 graduates in Nicoson Hall on commencement day (whenever that is) or ham it up in a commemorative salute from behind the podium, so please bare with me as I take my sole opportunity to stand and be heard (or rather, read) from my proverbial senior soapbox.

I could regret not discovering the redeeming challenges of education, inquisition, research and writing until the halfway point of my junior year, but I’m not apologizing for learning how to have a good time.

In my four-year collegiate experiment, I have spent my weekends, late nights and early mornings in varying social strata, doing the things that all nocturnal-student-partiers do to make school administrators queasy and giving UIndy police something to do on the weekends, all while encountering a vast array of intriguing people along the way. Not all of them are still at UIndy, still in school or still in the country, but every one of them taught me at least one thing. If we didn’t have the pleasure of meeting, well, I’m not apologizing for that, either. But to all the underclassmen and women out there, go enjoy yourself a little too much while you have the opportunity.

Things will change—if you want to graduate. Deadlines loom, projects persist and when a grade teeters on the edge of acceptable, then you realize that you should have been setting your alarm for that 8 a.m. class after all. Somewhere along the path of successful self-education, everyone learns the balancing act (some are better than others).

I adopted Mark Twain’s mantra to “never let schooling get in the way of an education” early in my college career. I can gladly reflect that I never sacrificed an opportunity to engage with the diverse multitude of faces on the UIndy campus and in the Indianapolis community at the expense of pouring over texts and studying for tests. Assuredly that’s one of multiple reasons that I did not earn valedictorian status, but I never aspired to. I still grew as a person, completed all that was required, and I bet I had more fun pushing the limits and connecting with the people who make life on the south side of Indianapolis tolerable.

Throughout much of our college careers, we are bombarded with workshops to help us control numerous aspects of our daily lives: how to handle stress, how to manage tasks, how to manage roommate disputes, how to avoid the pitfalls and dangers of irresponsible college life. Coming from a guy who believes that the burnt hand teaches best, those are just more ways to micro-manage your life and let someone else tell you how to do the things that can be figured out independently of any outside, would-be authority.

The best education is self-learned and self-taught. Only after making the big mistakes, shying away from the responsibilities and hitting the snooze button until I wallowed in academic apathy did I realize where I needed to put my time, energy and efforts. That’s when I learned the balancing act.

So I would submit that I will go out on a higher note than I came in on, and maybe I am being hypocritical considering I just skipped my first class of the semester this week (a new personal record in my last semester). Rest assured that if school seems hard your freshman year, the classes will get more challenging and demanding. You’ll either figure it out or, like many of former acquaintances and accomplices, flunk out.

But if you don’t have your priorities straight and everything under control, don’t freak out. Enjoy it and understand that these formative years are your last opportunities to be utterly disorganized and disoriented.

I don’t have any regrets.