So Brett, What’s it like at college?

I don’t know. I’ve been in college for 3 years and I still don’t know. College is so dynamic. One moment you’re having fun eating candy during Halloween, and the next moment you are keeled over on your bed suffering from some virus you caught over the weekend. One day you walk into class and you think, “man, I know this stuff like the back of my hand,” then you realize that that is a cliché, and you don’t really know or care about what the back of your hand looks like. Then your teacher hands back a paper you worked hard on but you only earned a C, and you feel like giving him a piece of your most well known body part… the back of your hand. At least… he’ll soon know it better than I do.

That’s the best part about college. Backhanding your teachers.

Nah I don’t backhand my professors. I’ll tell you what I know about college though. To be honest, it’s like one of those D&D dice. The kind that has like 50 sides to it. More options than a box of chocolate. Yeah I just one-upped Forrest Gump. Not only do you never know what you’re gonna get, but you have to take what it gives you and run with it. It won’t be all chocolaty sugar coated either. But when life gives you lemons (or a crappy roll of the dice), make lemonade (or wait for your next turn so you can make a new roll). My last “roll of the dice” landed me in the library for several hours while I tik-tak away at a computer science project. By the time I quit (I still haven’t finished, mind you), it was 12:30 at night. The library still had several students chatting and working. It was redeeming to find myself in the midst of so many other people in my situation – in the library working on some project. Whenever I used to sit at home or my dorm and do projects, I’d convince myself that I was the only person in the world awake at that moment, and I was working on some assignment that all of my classmates finished a long time ago. A glance at the library disproves my small naïve world.

So where’s this lemonade you were talkin' about Brett? Yes I seem to have simply been given lemons and no water, sugar, and ice to make lemonade with. It’s okay, last time I tried to make lemonade, it was from one of those little kool-aid packets, and I took a sip and it was the most bitter, sour, insane lemonade I had ever created. My roommate refused to try it…


My “lemonade” if you will comes from the trip home. The campus gains sort of serene environment at 12:30 AM. I’m used to seeing hundreds of people, police officers, honking cars, crazy pedestrians diving in front of my car… This time it was a quiet, dark, moon-lit walk home. My roommate left for the weekend, my friends are asleep, so it’s finally quiet time… you really learn to appreciate quiet time in college.

(Too) Small World

This weekend I drove back to Plano because I have a job working with a National Science Foundation grant. I attend weekly meetings with them because we are migrating our web site to a new Content Management System. This is all fine and dandy but guess what else is in Plano? My family… This can be a double edged sword. On one hand I love my family to death. They give me food and a bed to sleep in, but at the same time they can be so irritating. I think this is why so many students like to move away from home for college… veery veeeeeeery far away. I suppose I’m not the only one this has happened to, but it’s a shame I have to be one of the few.

So what happened then? I'm glad you asked. My mother and grandmother give me very basic instructions for my trip back to Denton. “Don’t drive too fast. Be careful, it’s dark outside. Call me when you get home…” Guess which one of these steps I forgot to follow?

I should also mention that it was homecoming weekend, and it was Saturday night as I was driving back. I made it unscathed back to my dorm room, but I suppose not everyone has that sort of luck, as there were a few reported accidents around the area. I brought quite a few clothes and items from Plano too, so I had to make two trips from my car to my dorm room on the third floor. One thing I didn’t bring with me the first time was my cell phone, as I simply laid it in the passenger seat during the hour long drive. On my way back to get it, I saw a few friends of mine at the dorm and began talking with everyone. We were having a fun time and I never got all the way back to my car. The next time I would get back to my car was a few hours later that night… But I was a few hours too late.

As any concerned mother would do, my parents gave me several calls (18), left several messages (9), drove up an hour to Denton to find me and even filed a missing person report with the police. So while I obliviously sat in my room talking to friends and watching the homecoming game, it seemed the whole world was looking for me. A buzz began to stir in the dorm when there were police officers roaming through the whole building. Everyone they came across was asked the same question: “Are you Brett McCormick? Are you Brett McCormick!?” By the time they found me I was on my way to get my phone from my car, 3 hours after I had gotten back to the dorms.

A few of my friends looked pretty freaked out as they watched the police question me, take my ID, walk me downstairs… In the end everything was fine, except my mother was in tears and I had quite a bit of explaining to do. When I say explaining though, I mean explaining to my parents that I’m an adult and I can fend for myself! Whether they choose to believe me or not is up to them. Just think though, what if I lived in Florida or Washington? That’s a lot of trouble to go through just to find out their son left his phone in the car! Interesting that in the past decade or two, we went from no cell phones, to entirely depending on them for everything, including the safety of others. I wonder what the next great life-saving (or irritating!) invention will be!