Dear college people who go to college, which I am not at anymore:

It is with a mixture of sadness and relief, but very little surprise, that I am forced to announce that I have scored myself an early ticket home. Thanks to a rigorous program of not ever turning anything in and refusing to go to class before 3 pm, and also of being surly, I have managed, in the seventh week of my eighth semester of college, to get my personal diploma sent back to the goddamn diploma factory. Take that, Diploma Factory!

For my part, I am getting shipped back to suburban Oklahoma. I intend, however, to continue writing for The Student Life, if only because I do not expect to have shit else to do. Please stay tuned for my new column, "What to Do Now That You Are Boring and Living at the Retirement Home." Topics addressed in the next issue will include shuffleboard, cats, and wondering if anyone will ever call me on the telephone.

But that is not all! Oh, no. In Week Two I will tackle a) pills, and b) the musical legacy of Hoagy Carmichael. In Week Three my subject will be "Sitting in the Sun with a Blanket on Your Knees, and Why It Is So Out of Sight." In Week Four I will send you a check made out to the electric company by mistake.

So after the power is shut off and the car is repossessed and I am fired from all of my jobs, I do not know what I will do. Perhaps I will quit school entirely. Perhaps I will swagger into town next January acting like I have been here all the time, like the Australian Open, or Dick Cheney. Perhaps I will take up laudanum. Ha ha! I am kidding, of course. Do not worry your pretty head about me. I will not end up living on the street, at any rate. The street is cold and inedible. I will end up living on the safety island, where I will dine on dandelions and crunchy insects. Eventually I will be flattened by a runaway tractor-trailer, and it will probably be for the best.

Still, I do not want my tragic flattening to go for naught, so I have prepared some text for a cautionary pamphlet. The title will be "Do Not Be a Jerk Like Me, You Jerk, Jerkface." If you are sleepy and crazed, and if you do not want to end up taking a leave of absence two months before you originally intended to graduate, then you had best take this advice to heart:

1. When you wake up at eight in the morning and you do not feel like going to class, even though it is a PAC requirement and you have not been there in two weeks, do not ask yourself, "What would Rod Stewart do?" and then go back to bed. Rod Stewart is not a college student, and you are, and I’m not, so if anybody here is Rod Stewart, it’s me. So back off.

2. Also, stop dressing like me.

3. And stop stealing my stuff.

4. And stop hanging around my car.

That is all the wisdom I have time to dispense this week, because I am trying to scrub all the curse words off the walls before my parents get here. This room is being renovated next year, so hopefully Maintenance will not mind that I have covered the wall next to the refrigerator with a red-and-orange Crayola rendering of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, above which appears the near-illegible caption "you are fucked, fuckser [sic]." I do not remember putting that there, but I guess I was drunk, or transported by Art, or something. I also drew a picture of a pelican. The pelican’s name is "Louis," and I think he is looking at me right now. Goodbye goodbye goodbye, xoxoxo, I love all of you very much, even if I do not know you, and even if you are weird, like Brian Andrews, or sort of creepy, like Fred Sontag. Cree-py. But beloved.

Next Issue: What to do in Oklahoma City if you are not an elderly person, and if you also do not like line dancing, or that fake Irish pub next to the mall. I think it is called "Harry O’Hooligan’s." Ugh.