Miami Student

Issue date: 4/25/06 Section: OpEd Page

Media Credit: Dan Chudzinski

I promised myself I would not write a farewell column. Maybe in my time at The Miami Student, I haven't been funny and I haven't been insightful, but at least I've been original - you have to give me that - and a weepy farewell column appeals to me about as much as getting a vasectomy with garden sheers.

However, farewell columns are kind of like having anal sex with your friend's dog. You don't want to do it, you tell yourself you're not going to do it, but then you're all alone in your buddy's house with Whistleton and you've got some time to kill while your pal goes to buy the beer.

So I find that after four years, I just have too much on my chest to not say goodbye. I'm not going to lie: The opportunity to write in this newspaper has been one of the best experiences of my life and one hell of a journey.

Blame my friend and co-editor Chris Gardner for getting me the job. The very first column I ever wrote elicited a rather nasty piece of hate mail. The editors at the time refused to run my second column, which ended with a joke about masturbation. Blame former editor in chief, Leah Rupp, for giving me a job as editor (and therefore the opportunity to make masturbation jokes in every column) mostly because I made her life a living hell when I wrote about how I would rather not have sex with that used tampon of a human being, Ann Coulter.

I never thought anything I would write could ever again elicit that much hate mail, furor and calls for me to lose my job. Then I got back from Europe and recounted my adventures in Amsterdam and Prague (sex shows, midget strippers and mind-altering substances) and had e-mails from Miami administrators telling me they would do everything in their power to make sure kids like me never got to study abroad at Miami. Reliable sources tell me that within the offices of the study abroad programs they have nickname for kids who just go overseas to debase themselves: "How do we keep out the Steve Markleys?" they say. One high-ranking individual wrote to The Student to claim that I was responsible for turning back the Enlightenment.

If only they could know how much that meant to me. It was like they were giving my ego a hand job.

I've had people come up to me to say they love my columns. I've had people write to me to say they hate them (once, a girl from the College Republicans wrote to tell me how misplaced my values were and the very next weekend I saw her name in the Police Beat for drunk driving). Either way, this gig has been the most fun I've ever had and I can't tell you how grateful I am that anyone took the time to form an opinion about me, good, bad or really, really bad.

Continued...

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