A little over a year ago, overexcited by the prospect of a daily recurring slot in the “True Life,” “Real World,” “Go to Work Every Day” lineup, I made the decision to hustle my frosty, Binghamton-chilled butt out of college and graduate early. “I will have so much money!” I thought. I will get to stop doing busywork! My mind reeled with the possibilities. I could afford to take real vacations. I could live back in the city, which is at least 10 to 20 degrees warmer than good old Vestal. I would be able to escape the land of Downtown landlords who threaten to throw you out, go dancing in a few places other than Flashbacks and feel like a real person.

Reality has set in, and it has set in hard. A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, drunk IMs me at 4:30 p.m. when I have already been at my desk for seven hours, typing into little Excel boxes. I have dreams about Excel. Sometimes I wake up panicked about the fact that I forgot to type something into Excel. Sometimes I have daydreams about not using Excel, but then get in trouble for entering things incorrectly into Excel because I was daydreaming. There are no vacations looming in the future. And New York City has been very, very (very) cold. And despite the fact that it didn’t seem so bad in high school, living in Staten Island is not, in fact, living in the city, especially when your mother still makes you clean your room. And when it takes you an hour and a half to get to work.

Are you beginning to get the idea? To all of those seniors (and not quite seniors) eager to put on those extremely fashion-forward (umm …) gowns and dance yourselves into that seat and throw your mortarboard up in the air, heed this warning: “Real Life” means waking up early and being too tired to go dancing (and when you do, they don’t ever play “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston at exactly the right moment). It means you miss your friends desperately, especially when they drunk IM you at 4:30 p.m. And so, remembering how I worked way too many hours a day to “escape” Binghamton early, this is my advice to you: in this final semester, when the windchill has you down, remember to slow down, enjoy the company you are with, dance with some townies and enjoy yourself. Sleep in. Revel in the fact that it takes you about four minutes to get to class. If you’re cold, slap on some Timberlands and buy an extra sweatshirt from the University Bookstore. Go to class, if you feel like it. Seriously, only if you feel like it. Unless you’re failing. But then again, if you are, and you happen to not qualify to graduate this spring … well … there may be worse things out there.