Miami Student

Issue date: 9/17/04 Section: OpEd Page

Now. This April, you're going to get a whole flood of two-bit pieces from writers sobbing that their Miami run is through, struggling to pass on to the next stage of the rat race, sentimentalizing for one last clichéd run-through of their clichéd experience.I'm not going to do that. I really just don't think I could make it through a whole article come April without bawling with the swoons of nostalgia.So, I've decided, why not just get it over with?Let September be the month for me to take one last look back, toot my own horn, and tell you all of all the platitude plateaus I have reached, before settling back down to work, griping about the more pressing issues: popped collars, instant messaging and cellular telephones.I still say, as the New Jersey poet before me, "We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school, (pinned sweaty and prone-supine in the back seat of a GTO)" but Miami, what is our children learning? Seldom is that question asked. What have you learned me after four years?I've learned that what I lack in talent, I can always make up in wealth and my WASP credentials.I've learned I really was better off half-assing my Guard duty than piloting a swift boat down the Mekong, even if Pops did say a little shrapnel in my thigh would go a long way to further my future political career.I've learned hard work gets you a job in the coalmines of southern New Jersey, where there are, like, no really, really good-looking people. Do you really think hard work got me those internships at Esquire, Playboy, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the London Times, the Baghdad Daily Bee or the Pyongyang Picayune? No. It was connections. Sorry?I've learned that googling myself, my friends and my family is a great way to waste time - wait, no, I learned that in junior high.I've learned by now it's who you look like, not who you are.I've learned cops are more than just narcs out to fight you for your right to party. No, really, they provide great palaver for college newspapers starved for material. Really, Joshua Hunt, stop sign puncher-person, or William Pendergast, sophomore streaker caught in socks-person, or John Savage III, intoxicated student who passes out in yard! HAHAHA, like, omg, am I glad not to be you right now! What would we do without you? (For serious!)I've learned through my three years at scout quarterback, shadowing Ben Roethlisberger, that it is often the invisible man who will make or break our nation's great talents.I've learned that spontaneity is truly a gift, allowing for all those spur-of-the-moment Learjet trips to Nova Scotia, that camelback trip across the Sahara, that hike of the Great Wall of China. You just never can tell with me. One minute I'm trolling Atlantis, the next I'm blazing through Amsterdam in a double-decker bus with Dan Hayes and Robbie Cusser, the next minute, it's a random Tuesday night and I'm binge drinking in a London pub. I'm simply as unpredictable as the weather.But, that aside, Miami, I've learned back in Ohio that if you build it, they will come, and I'm not just talking about 18-year-old girls. Dead baseball players living in cornfields. They'll come, too.

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