Somehow, through some incredible act of nature, I am graduating in a week, making this my final column while a student in scenic College Park. Since I won’t be a student here any longer, I can’t find one reason I would ever set foot in this town again, other than to visit people and/or go to China CafŽ since I think I’m the only person who eats there, and I feel bad for the place. Given that any columns I might write later would no longer deal with College Park, I’d like to take this time to provide some final analysis of the town Newsweek declared the “City with the Most Abhorrent Original Smell.”
Many people ask, “Paul, I know College Park is a lousy town, but what can I do? It’s where I go to school, and I have to live there. Right?” WRONG. I’d say the best solution for dealing with this town is to promptly move elsewhere. It took me two and a half years before I realized this, and my desire to move bundled up inside me for so long, festering and churning, that I actually ended up moving across continents.
Best decision I ever made. But if for some reason you do have to stay here, I think your best option is to deny you do. When people ask where you’re from, you can just say, “Near Hyattsville,” and when they ask where near Hyattsville, you can tell them to shut the hell up.
But ultimately, I am a realist, and I understand many of you are forced to live here against your will. Is there any way, you might ask, to improve this town? Well, the city has done some things in the right direction. Getting Chipotle was a start. The problem lies in the 50 buildings surrounding Chipotle, and the fact they exist. I don’t think they’re going anywhere soon, so I think you’ll just have to suck it up and keep buying your groceries at Wawa Food Market, where the sandwiches are so nasty, by the way, that hearing people say they look forward to buying them makes me want to stab myself in the eye.
But who cares? It’s over. All I have left are my many cherished memories to which I’ll desperately cling as my life slowly disintegrates from a cushy, parentally supported environment into the numbingly harsh realities of the real world. But could there perhaps be a way to ease the change? Yes, of course there is, you fools; and after three years of hilarious satire and cutting-edge social discourse, I would like to give a final sobering word of advice.
Don’t hang on so desperately to the college environment. It isn’t real. Landlords don’t have bowls of gumdrops on their desks, and bosses don’t care if you tried your best. The more you attach yourself to it, the harder it will be to let go. You’ll be one of those guys in their 30s who keeps going back to Cornerstone Grill and Loft, and everyone stares at you out of the corners of his or her eyes, or in my case, punches you in the back of the head and runs away really quickly. Enjoy yourself, sure, but within a framework of understanding of why you’re really supposed to be here: to learn something, get out of here and get a damn job, which I need to find really quickly.
Paul Vivari is a senior English major who is currently scouring for a job. His occasional humor column ran Wednesdays since spring 2003. He can be reached at pvivari@hotmail.com.
