I am 22. On Oct. 14, 2000, I turned 21 and became able to legally drink in the United States. On Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2000, I experienced my first ‘80s night at the Tombs. Wednesdays are now one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. This might have something to do with the fact that I don’t have classes on Thursday or Friday, but that is beside the point for now. Basically, I was just thinking about three of my favorite things and how they all sort of tie my life together.
The first would be ‘80s night, or maybe the Tombs, or perhaps even more broadly, partying in general. The second of my favorite things is a song by Whitesnake called “Here I Go Again.” This is a song I came to love at ‘80s night. The third of my favorite things on this list is the movie The Magnificent Seven. My dad made me watch a lot of Westerns and WWII movies when I was younger to try and get me to go to sleep, but this is one movie that I really liked. So let me try to take these three of my favorite things and try and explain a little about where I find myself.
To go out of order, I will start with Whitesnake. My favorite line from that song is, “I don’t know where I’m goin’ but I sure know where I been / Here I go again on my own / Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known / Here I go again.” Well, classes have ended, and finals are nearly upon us. Yet somehow I find myself once again in a position where a great deal of my grades depends on what I do in the next two weeks. I am not really talking about the tests or the papers themselves. I am talking about how I spend my time. I seemed to have developed this pattern where I spend most of the semester digging myself a hole and the last two weeks digging myself out of it. The fact that I am a senior scares me as well, because while there is something good to be said about the next to last semester of finals, there is that ever-pending question of what am I doing next year. That would be a whole other piece. Anyway, so I feel like saying “I don’t know where I am going but I sure know where I been / Here I go again.”
Now, back to ‘80s night, the Tombs and partying. I ask myself why I am behind in the work I need to do. Why must I work so hard these last two weeks of the semester? I think I may have an answer. This semester I have spent a great deal of time at the Tombs. I have also spent a great deal of time playing a computer game called Civil War General II. I have a class about the Civil War, and whenever we have that class, I usually spend the rest of my free time that day playing the game. I feel like kind of a dork, but hey, if it makes me happy, it can’t be that bad, right?
So anyway, that shoots my Tuesdays down (I have that class on Tuesday). Mondays are a wash because I have three long classes, and then a staff meeting at 10:30 p.m. because I am a Resident Assistant. Wednesdays I never do anything because that is the start of my weekend. Usually I am out pretty late, too, because it is ‘80s night. Thursdays I like to sleep in, and then I go to work for five hours. I get back and usually people force me to play poker until all hours of the morning. I wake up Friday afternoon, and before you know it, normal people are starting their weekends and it is time to go out again. Saturday and Sunday are more of the same.
Now, however, it is crunch time. There are four papers and two finals left for me this semester. Those papers total a minimum of 53 pages of writing. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of pages of reading to be done for those papers and tests. I can do it, I think. I am taking the necessary steps to prepare. After all, I am writing about all the things I need to do. I suppose I could stop writing up these things and go do them, but I don’t feel that that is necessary just yet.
This is the situation that makes me think of The Magnificent Seven. This movie is about seven cowboys who are hired to go across the border into Mexico and help a small village fight off a band of about 100 bandits. The odds are against them. The movie really has an all-star cast. Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson are all in the movie. Just before the bandits come for the first time since the seven have come to the village, Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner go to see this old man who is sort of the wise man-guru of the village. The guru asks how things are going. Steve McQueen says he once heard a story about a man who fell off a 10-story building. People standing next to the windows on each of the floors could hear the man saying, “So far, so good.” The guru asks again how things are going. Steve McQueen answers, “So far, so good.” How is my studying going? So far, so good.
So here I stand not sure where I am going, knowing I would rather be at the Tombs or playing poker. But so far, so good. I find consolation in the ending of The Magnificent Seven. Although the seven suffer setbacks and four end up dead, they triumph. Like the poster in my room says, “They fought like 700.” It is time for me to study like 700. Good luck to all for the next two weeks.
