Imagine finally getting that damned diploma from your wretched professors who made your life a living academic nightmare. Imagine breezing passed your colleagues who have yet to finish a few more semesters before they can leave that accursed community that we know and love as college. Imagine graduating. Beautiful, eh? Awe-inspiring. Definitely a moment worthy of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer, the Oscar… Definitely a moment you'll remember forever…

But before you go hopping around and thanking all those little people that made your award possible, take note of the keyword here: moment. You see, my dear fellow, your ecstasy, your euphoria, your sweet taste of Elysium lasts but a few select minutes, hours and days. After that your moment will inevitably end.

     It's like walking through a beautifully furnished gateway while everybody watches and cheers you on. In your pride and vanity as a learned and educated person of the university, you peer through the gates and enter it boisterously. At first, everything seems splendid. The grass is green, the people are friendly, the skies are blue, and in this world, the Backstreet boys do not exist. Heaven's little alcove, you think to yourself, and continue to happily trek through the different sights around you. Little do you realize, however, that the gates you entered are slowly closing; and when they finally do, the grass starts to decay rapidly, the people start bickering like Miriam Santiago, darkness blots the sun and boybands have multiplied more than sex-starved rabbits. A hollow voice makes itself apparent as it mocks you with these few cryptic words… "Welcome to the real world, fool."

     You feel a shiver run down your spine as you succumb to the truth that has made itself apparent: You are not in college anymore. You no longer become part of the daily payroll of the parent-child-allowance-program. You no longer are spoon-fed with ideas and advice; instead you are constantly pressured to get a job and earn for the family. You become nagged at by the different sectors of society. Heck, you are even required to buy Christmas gifts instead of receiving them as blissfully as you did prior to entering that damned gate. Suddenly you feel that someone up there has made a really funny joke and you, my friend, have irrevocably become the punch line. Unfortunately enough for you the joke lasts much longer than you think. What's the joke called? Hmmm, Life. Your life.

     Ah, but I think I've painted only the darker shades of being recently graduated. Let us now turn out attention to the lighter side of passing through those blasted gates:

     Respect. You graduated, my friend. This entitles you to a new level of respect from everybody. (And if they don't, you can shove your hard-earned diploma up their asses.)

     Independence. Passing through those gates alone means that you have to live life alone. This event, contrary to popular belief, is a good thing. For how can one truly live if one is constantly amidst beings who make logical intelligent decisions (read: parents, teachers, your dog)? With your newfound independence, you are now given free reign to govern yourself properly, responsibly and systematically. Of course, you won't actually do this till you've passed the 30-year-old mark, but you're given free reign anyway.

     Graduation Gift. It is the sole right of every graduate to receive a really expensive gift after they have successfully waved their diplomas in front of their parent's noses. These objects of interest take a variety of forms, but the most common of which are four-wheel shiny constructs that move. Cars. Yes, you are entitled to get a car damnit. But due to cost restraints and because the government is cheating everybody by hiking the price of import taxes, many of those who graduate are not able to claim this right properly. Such injustice!

     Yet even with these seemingly beautiful advantages, you cringe from the thought of real life and make a run back for the gates that'll lead you back to college. Alas, to those poor fools who regain entry into their universities, they may be able to claim their studies, their allowances and their parties… but never will they be able to regain their youth, their enthusiasm, their will to go through college just because it's something after high school. For now they know where their paths will take them. In the long run, at the end of those succeeding semesters, after those god-awful classes, lies something that cannot be avoided: A new dawn.

     Life after college can be delayed but it cannot be stopped.

     To the recently graduated, heed my words, for this graduate, in his limited wisdom, in all his words of bullshit, is going back from whence he came. College, here I come!

     Note: This document is proof that one can indeed go crazy when not doing anything progressive. Words, ideas and general bullshit laid out in this essay are products of the author's ingenuity and stupidity. Failure to go out on this particular Friday night has inadvertently led to this manuscript.