I've even raped and killed a mountain panda in the hills of Shaanxi.

When I was in high school, I figured I'd go to school in Texas. I applied to schools outside of Texas, of course, but you know. Small town girl. I was still in the top 5% of my class at nerd school, so I figured I'd stick to a small pond. And then I got a huge financial aid package to Duke University, so much so that I only would have to pay for about one year's tuition. Which, you know, was still more than in-state tuition for all four years. But my friend Dale, who was attending said school, pointed out that Duke would open a lot of doors for jobs afterwards, and paying off the loans would be a cinch. (I won't point out the flaw in his plan right now, since I was planning to major in Computer Science - and in fact I'd probably be all paid off if not for all those layoffs. At least I paid off my car.)

So, of course that changed my life irrevocably, opened my mind about 75% more than it ever had been before. I don't think college is for everyone, but for people in the 80th percentile and above, it's a rather essential experience, and I feel private schools tend to enrich this experience more.

Which is funny for me to say, since I thought Duke was the most inane environment ever. Fortunately my freshman year I had a roommate, Ana, who felt the exact same way. Duke is one of those rare beasts, a party school for academics. It was a world-class education, for sure, but every weekend you could go to five different mixers and get wasted off keg beer and stumble into bed and then have a lovely Walk Of Shame. Oh, yeah, and apparently there's a BASKETBALL TEAM!

Ana and I avoided most of this by getting into raves, and the film society. Technically I never belonged officially to the film club, but I went to most of the movies and a couple of the meetings. We also got apartment housing as soon as was humanly possible. Sometimes we were at odds, as I was even more tactless and filthy then, but I tried to learn how to be a good friend from her. We had a group - the Dudez - us, Clark, Holger, Sitar, Norman, and Fara. The latter two were more peripheral members, but they did participate in many important Dudez events. (Fara transferred after her freshman year, but she was still an honorary Dude. Technically the group didn't even form until our Junior year, since most of the members are two years younger than we are.)

We had our fun by mocking the sacred ideals held by the student body - mainly, basketball. I did attend a few games after some long study sessions, and Ana and I hit an 80s night that some frat held, but mostly it was movie watching and subversion. This was helped greatly by Clark's hearse. We even threw our own party, but people only danced to crappy hip-hop. The road trip to New Orleans was classic, though, and after we graduated, I still lived in the area and kept hanging out with the Dudez. I even flew to see Ana and Morrissey and learned to ski! When Holger did a semester abroad in Argentina, we flew down to meet him during his break. And when they finally all graduated, we had a European tour. Good times.

I fell out of touch after moving out west, but Facebook means you sort of know who's married and who has a kid. So this weekend, I finally got to meet Ana's long-term boyfriend (and baby-daddy), Joseph. So this Saturday, we woke up early, showered, put on our finery for their wedding, and drove to a nature preserve in Oakland. (All relevant pics here.) Ana had come out looking at UW for graduate school, but instead she went to Vermont. Another life-changing moment, as she met Joseph there! The man who introduced them, Benjy, chatted with Reg while I put Ana's makeup on. They had already had a proper ceremony in Croatia, but this legal part was for his family, and well, the USA. I got to sign as a witness and all. The "ceremony"/announcement went fast, as her 18-month-old Thomas had to be held the entire time.

It was a gorgeous day, although a bit on the hot side. We were just under a ridge, which was nice and breezy, but where the wedding party sat was just low enough to get hardly any sort of breeze. So we drank lots of nice ginger limeade and hibiscus lemonade, made small talk, chatted with people we hadn't seen in years, and watched the bride and groom dance to a traditional music before the caterer finally finished grilling the meat. Everyone fell upon the food happily, as it was quite delicious. Everything was really lovely, and I was glad to see Ana happily paired off at last. I mean, she'd been happy before I saw her, but you know. Makes it real. That's what the wedding was for, I suppose, to make it real to society. And, as I tactlessly pointed out, to save their son from bastardry.

So let's move forward to the premise that college is bad, because it encourages a culture of excess. Either you meet and fuck a shitton of people, or you drink too much, or drop too much acid, or just overdose on drama. And if you ain't doing any of that, you're probably working way too fucking hard on classes. There are very few careers where you have to pull all-nighters, ever.

But then again, it probably goes back to high school. The reason people explode in college is because their whole life up to that point, they've had to fucking ask permission to go to the fucking bathroom. Freedom is fun! and scary.

Something needs to be done. But not for me, I'm over it, I work for a living.