Burning the last bridges
Dieter Huneryager
Issue date: 5/29/09 Section: Opinions & Editorials
The most boring variety of outgoing senior is the hard-working successful one. These are the friends one never saw socially this year until they found out they got into graduate school or received honors, at which point they go hog-wild at the VR because they know they have a future.
As one who excelled in mediocrity throughout the majority of his Lawrence career, I can't tolerate such people. Even when they buy a couple of celebratory pitchers to share with everyone else, I inebriate myself with their well-deserved drinks resentfully, as I know they'll continue their hitherto blandness once they enroll in their respective masters programs.
In contrast, I can't get enough of people who fail at what they strive for. I know a senior philosophy major who, at the beginning of the year, was planning to graduate with honors in June. For months he would put in sporadic all-nighters, determined to let his intellect outweigh his inherent laziness so that he could have something to boast about when he graduated. He gave up on this project a couple of weeks ago when he decided the work he had done was not sufficient for him to be able to finish before graduation.
This was hilariously disappointing in and of itself, but his misfortune reached a pinnacle of schadenfreude-worthy failure when he found out that due to the Lawrence registrar being a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape and fees, there's a good chance that the credits he earned while studying abroad won't be transferred and thus the $170,000 his parents coughed up for him to earn his bachelor's will be for naught.
His senior year was such a disappointment, in fact, that a friend of his filmed an honors project centered on how much his life is going to suck after college. No, seriously. It's called "The End of the World" and it's being shown in the Wriston auditorium tonight at 6 p.m.
No one has ever based an honors project film around someone successful. That would be tediously dull. Contrast that awesome failure with the most successful graduating philosophy major, Andy Specht, who has literally only skipped one class since freshman year, received $1,500 for something honors-related and is attending graduate school this fall with a full scholarship.
As one who excelled in mediocrity throughout the majority of his Lawrence career, I can't tolerate such people. Even when they buy a couple of celebratory pitchers to share with everyone else, I inebriate myself with their well-deserved drinks resentfully, as I know they'll continue their hitherto blandness once they enroll in their respective masters programs.
In contrast, I can't get enough of people who fail at what they strive for. I know a senior philosophy major who, at the beginning of the year, was planning to graduate with honors in June. For months he would put in sporadic all-nighters, determined to let his intellect outweigh his inherent laziness so that he could have something to boast about when he graduated. He gave up on this project a couple of weeks ago when he decided the work he had done was not sufficient for him to be able to finish before graduation.
This was hilariously disappointing in and of itself, but his misfortune reached a pinnacle of schadenfreude-worthy failure when he found out that due to the Lawrence registrar being a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape and fees, there's a good chance that the credits he earned while studying abroad won't be transferred and thus the $170,000 his parents coughed up for him to earn his bachelor's will be for naught.
His senior year was such a disappointment, in fact, that a friend of his filmed an honors project centered on how much his life is going to suck after college. No, seriously. It's called "The End of the World" and it's being shown in the Wriston auditorium tonight at 6 p.m.
No one has ever based an honors project film around someone successful. That would be tediously dull. Contrast that awesome failure with the most successful graduating philosophy major, Andy Specht, who has literally only skipped one class since freshman year, received $1,500 for something honors-related and is attending graduate school this fall with a full scholarship.
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