Welcome to the wonderful world of debt.

Thus began my Wednesday morning student loan exit counseling.
I sat with a few dozen other sleepy seniors in a secret auditorium in the back of the GSU, which fittingly had no windows, and one door guarded by a Student Loan Department worker. Sure, she was a 5 foot tall, 50 year old woman in a cardigan...but I imagined she would morph into some sort of Financial Aid Transformer if someone tried leaving. "SIT DOWN and PAY US BACK!" she would holler in a robotic, rage-filled voice, "You belong to us now, you debt incurring minion!" Needless to say, I stayed in my chair.
The first part of the presentation covered the history of the Perkins Loan Program, which I'm really glad I heard. Now, and for the next 109 times I make payments on these loans, I will thank Mr. Perkins, and the BU employee who told me about him. We then received all sorts of deliciously fun information about payments, deferments, cancellations and debt, all of which I tried to compute with the few hours of sleep I had salvaged the night before. What did, and still does, remain clear to me after attending this is the following:
1.) I am in debt. This sounds a lot more romantically tragic in Charles Dickens novels...in 2006 Boston, it's just a sucky feeling and a remarkably bad way to start a Wednesday.
2.) I need a job. Badly...and now. This makes me think of Tuesday night (also the reason I was so tired at this meeting). Tuesday was 50 days til graduation, and because of it, we partied hearty at Avalon. The bunch of us said we'd stay til "12:30, tops." We left at 1:30, after a night of dancin' like fools. At the beginning of the night, almost prophetically, a bass-filled, trance-like song came on, in which a woman's voice repeated the words, "She's homeless." I don't really understand why you'd want to repeat that through an entire song, unless you're going for a whole Zoolander-Derelict thing. Then I realized, holy crap, this is like my anthem. I'm going to be a tri-lingual college graduate, living in a box under a bridge along the Charles and look back to that night and the "She's homeless" song...how art imitates life...well, hopefully not.
3.) The BU student loan department wants to know everything...I mean EVERYTHING...about you. I fully expected to turn a page and see the following:
Blood type:
Favorite color:
Boxers or briefs:
Coke or Pepsi:
How many sugars do you put in your coffee?
Are you a vegetarian?
Who is your favorite Beatle?

I left around 9:45 with a sore hand from filling out these epically long forms, the shocking realization that college life is over, and the opportunity to see the GSU with nobody in the bagel line. Still, it really could have been a lot worse, and while it did snap me into the reality of paying back my college education, I have no regrets. BU has been an amazing ride, and thanks to Mr. Perkins, I've been able to enjoy it a lot.
Oh, and the obvious answer to that last question is Ringo...anybody who picks John, Paul or George is clearly missing the cool factor involved with being a British drummer with a bowl cut.