Finally. Finally. It only took five years of daily studying, attending monotonous lectures with walking corpses, and reams of paper with odd doodles of free-moment diagrams. This piece of paper was bought on the installment plan: ten painful payments to the LSU Bursar’s Office, all without a thank you or a smile, but with 134 credit hours’ worth of painful exams as a slap in the face. On May 15, I reap the reward: one single piece of paper.

Well, maybe not really five long years, considering I graduated from high school fifteen years ago, but in reality, I have suffered long enough for a simple eight-by-eleven sheet of paper.

When it comes to thanking people for helping me through this, I can only blame myself and the general kicks in the ass that I gave myself to barely scrape by those ungodly, unfair, and unholy exams that my sadistic teachers gleefully gave as a sort of punishment for making them devise tests for us to take. Thanking them for the wisdom they imparted to me would be a waste of time, as they would only consider it a reason to slap me with one more quiz, one more word problem, maybe even one more moronic ABETS survey on what I thought of their classes and how they would make me a more moronic engineer fifty years down the line.

I could thank the textbook authors, the people that wrote the formulas that I gleefully copied ad nauseam onto homework assignments, all with the hope that g, s, t, r, q, and f all equaled something that made my teacher smile and pass positive judgment so I could pass. (Remember that ΣF=0). No, those jack-a-monkeys couldn’t explain themselves out of a paper bag, much less tell me how much steel to add to concrete to keep that bridge from plummeting into the murky swampland that it is spanning. (Don’t worry: I passed that class with a D, but it was still a passing grade…)

I do want to point out a few teachers here at LSU that really stick out as I practice donning my cap and gown for my mid-May march. These professors either made my day or made me think that maybe online college was the way for me.

Carla Pethke, my English 1001 and 1002 teacher: Although I have striking good looks, wit to span the generations, and dancing abilities that make me question my race, Ms. Pethke’s help and fun classes taught me to express all those talents with the written word. She taught me to wield words like a world-class chef, making a casserole of goodness that my one or two readers eat and sop up the leftovers with French bread. If you are a freshman, are bored, or have the inclination to return to school, look her up and take her class. I can’t promise that she can do miracles for you like she did for me, but at least you will be able to have a fun class with computers and coeds.

However, if you want your eyeballs to bleed and to lose years off your life, I might recommend Civil Engineering 4600, Geometric Design of Airports and Highways, taught by the nefarious Dr. Brian Wolshon, P.E. Make sure Dr. Wolshon is teaching, because without him, you may actually learn how to make traffic a thing of the past here in the state, and how to make a runway that even a flying brick can land on. Dr. Wolshon, however, could turn your birthday into a funeral; a class into a two-hour preview of the ninth ring of hell; and a test into the pure embodiment of euthanasia.

He continuously brags about the free-flowing cars in his hometown somewhere up north (I think it may have been Canada or Minnesota), yet continuously taught us … nothing. He made us watch horrifying movies of crash-test cars and guardrails. Dr. Wolshon did, in fact, teach us one thing that I take with me as I run like a coward out of this state with my diploma: I’m going to end up living in a cardboard box under the overpass.

Good news, Dr. Wolshon: Not only can I design the overpass, but I also found a box big enough for me and my wife to live in. You can come visit any time you want; just bring new duct tape, and beware the one-armed panhandler that lives next door – he knows where you got your shoes…

But I say goodbye to a chapter of my life that, although it seemed an eternity, was only a blink of a moment in my life. No more lazy days of waltzing into class, clad only in shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops, staring at the teens and their lack of modesty, reading the paper instead of paying attention, and rolling out of bed at the crack of 11 to make that noonish class.

Gone are the days of joining clubs for the free food, free laundry and meals at Mom’s, ramen noodles, and counting change for dinner. But sadly, gone are the days of tailgating all day, screaming my head off and waving signs from the student section of Tiger Stadium on a Saturday night, arm-in-arm with a stranger singing the alma mater when we win, screaming at Nick $aban when we lose, and that smug feeling you get when you take a freshman class as a senior.

With every yang is the yin. I now get business cards, an actual office, enough money that the ATM won’t laugh at me anymore, and we can get real beef instead of goat meat now. Weekends, the two days of study and report-writing, have returned to being days of sleeping in and nothingness. I think that is the best reward for five years of agony.

Nighttime, too, is free to watch TV in exchange for eight hours of working each day. I finally get to grow up, marry, and spread my DNA to the little spawns that will no doubt have a hand in the destruction of mankind. Thank you, LSU!!!!