I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone's life when character is fixed forever; for me, it was that first fall term I spent at Hampden.

Fourth in a series of four. 

Things About and Around My College Transcript: 1995 - 1996

--So many of my favorite classes were this year! Suburbia and Its Culture, Film Censorship in America, The U.S. During the 1960s, The American Revolution, Italian I (easy A! love this language!), and my #1 favorite: History of the City of New York, taught by one of the greatest professors ever, Kenneth T. Jackson. God, that was a great class -- I wish I could take it over and over. The marquee event of it was the annual all-night bike ride throughout the city, with some 250 of us led by Professor Jackson starting on campus at 9:00 p.m., riding all over the damn place, stopping for a pub breakfast at 4:00 in the morning, swinging by the Fulton Fish Market, and finishing by crossing the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn.

--Annnnd also two of the worst: Laboratory in Screenwriting, and Senior Project: Screenwriting. OMFG these were terrible. My screenplay was fucking horrifyingly bad -- so bad that I wouldn't even read it at Cringe, because even now, seventeen years after I turned it in at the prof's office and went straight back to my room to smoke out and watch Dazed and Confused again to get it off my mind, I'd have a brain aneurism and die of shame.

--Mr. Gleemonex and I shared my eensy tiny single dorm room this year (he raaather unofficially, heh). He was working a job that was a very good learning experience and a "name" to go on his resume, but which paid a very studenty wage, so we shacked up. Mr. Gleemonex still had his student ID from the same dorm from the year before, making the whole thing relatively easy to manage. Side bonus: Total parental rebellion on my part. Ma and Pa Gleemonex would have shat twice and died if they knew. To this day, I think Ma Gleemonex prefers not to know. 

--This is also the year we met and bonded for life with the Drink Nazi, aka the Hedonist, aka Our Most Beloved Jew, aka The Kid/The Freshman. The seniors had all the singles in this dorm, and the doubles were filled with freshmen. This guy's roommate was an utter dud, so being a social guy in general, the Kid was more often out of his room than in it, and became well-known on our floor. He stopped in to my room in search of a microwave for his Hot Pockets once, and the rest is history (history that involves a LOT of weed, a ton of booze, the best snacks ever when we were smoking up together [except that one time he brought matzoh crackers which WHAT. THE. FUCK. where is the Ben & Jerry's], making snow angels in the middle of Broadway around 2:00 a.m. one quiet still new-snowy night after tumbling out of an extremely loud campus bar, a lot of the deep philosophical conversations that you have all the time when you're a freshman and have mostly abandoned by the time you're a senior, etc.).

--So, a lot of weirdness, a lot of good times, a lot of graduation-related agita* looming, some of the funnest parts of the whole four years -- and I finished with another semester on the Dean's List and a 3.6 cumulative GPA. College, y'all.

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*O dumpster-diving christ I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how stressful it was to have my family there for graduation -- my mom quitting a 30-year pack-a-day smoking habit & going through menopause, my dad recently fallen off the wagon mit force, my sibs not in good places in their own lives, general what-next angst, no job or school prospects lined up, no fucking money AT ALL, weight at an all-time high because of the weed munchies and a diet consisting mostly of SunBolt and Cheetos .... yikes. That shit makes seventh grade look awesome by comparison.