Being in college is pretty cool, huh?

Even those of us who arrived here a little past high school must feel the thrill of being in the academic setting.

You can walk around campus and just feel the mystic ambiance of all the great minds thinking really neat stuff.

You should all e-mail me or call me or whatever, and tell me what you love about college, or what you hate; what you’ll always remember, or what drives you really nuts.

It could be any little thing, or any huge thing. Yes, I’m serious. Send them in. Just think how proud your folks would be.

So, anyway, when I was in high school, there were two infinitely attractive options calling to me, bewitching me.

One was Life. Oh, to be out in the world; renting my own apartment with my very own money – which was somehow going to morph into something more substantial than a top wage at Taco John’s – getting married, having car payments, pediatric bills.

Purchasing, and then repairing, every type of major appliance, over, and over, and over…

Oh, sorry. Actually, it was just the independent part that was calling to me; the rest are by-products – sort of a chain reaction that turns and feeds upon itself. Oops, there I go again. I’m just kidding. Life is very cool. Kids are even better. Until puberty strikes.

There was another temptation — college. University. Mecca of Higher Learning – and even higher aspiration. Deep, profound people thinking deep, profound thoughts.

A beatnik fringe being cosmic, intense, and romantically bleak and depressed. A hot-bed of social, political, and personal reforming and crusading. Home of the intellectually motivated.

At any rate, I decided it wasn’t too late. So I’m a little older now. All those things and people will still be there; it’s a university. And ISU will do just fine.

After all, this is where the computer was virtually born – pun intended – not to mention the beginning of the end for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (I probably should have thought that one out, huh?)

So what is it I love about college now that I’m here?

I have borrowed money (this I don’t love, but I am developing an attachment…) to follow my heart, have fun, have my summers off, and do what I love to do the very best – learn.

I’m in a place where brilliant, dramatic productions are staged by talented people. I’m also in a place where all that is at risk of being overshadowed by silly, condescending productions full of political posturing, one-dimensional characters, and performances by stiff and phony actors.

I mean, this is where you can see a touching, splendid staging of Dancing at Lughnasa.

At this same college a known bigot is honored and defended by sleazy, cheesy commercialism that would also provide greasy burgers and bumbling clowns for the sake of the student body. You know, I am so glad they let us ‘win’ that McHub thing. I just can’t stand the smell of those reconstituted onions.

College is better than a French street as far as fashions are concerned. I love knowing that I can look around any day and see Marilyn-Monroe-incarnate, 70’s retro, militant-radical, and my personal choice – fresh-from-the-hamper-it’s-washday-nothing-clean. It’s so diverse and empowering.

Where else can you go where the only people who think those really wide pathways aren’t sidewalks in disguise are the idiots trying to drive their cars on them?

And where else can you go to have a great cup of joe, and some enlightening conversation with friends in a tangibly real environment (M-shop), and have someone not happy with the looseness of the roll of their tobacco, and so they start rap-rap-rap-rap-rap-rap-ping their cigarette pack against the heel of their hand, their thigh, the table, their bag, their books, until finally you can’t stand it anymore, and you just want to stand up right in the middle of a blues riff, or disco revue, or a little Jeff Healey, or whatever is coming through the speakers, which you can’t really hear anyway, and just yell in a staccato rap: HEY BUDDY WHY DONCHA JUST SMOKE A STICK SO YOU CAN KNOCK THAT OFF?

But you don’t. That would be politically incorrect, and potentially threatening to an individual’s right to be annoying. Why, this may even be seen as some sort of discrimination. And we can’t have that, because this is the only kind of diversity we can handle, and the only kind we can enthusiastically protect.

I love college. How about you? Write me.

Thought for the day: There you are just going along with your day not even knowing that you could use a smile, and suddenly you see one brownie-type bar just waiting on a plate.

And you know it was waiting just for you, because there on a little sign right above it – maybe even written by a girl named Katie – are these words: “Nutty-chocolately-oatmealy-brown sugary-bar-thing”.

How can that not make you smile?

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Audrae Jones is a senior in English from Clear Lake.