I feel like I’m playing with one of those toys from the pediatrician’s office with the multicolor beads on a wire ground into a block of wood.

As we sat outside beneath the roar of planes from the airfield next door, everyone decided that it would be prudent to drink beer. If you have known me for any amount of time, you know of my rocky relationship with this most insidious beverage. It’s gross. It’s beyond gross. I smell it – nay, I look at it the wrong way – and I am mere steps away from an esophageal eruption on par with most active volcanoes.

However, as I sat at a picnic table with a bunch of other people around my age I realized that my life cannot proceed like this. As disgusting as beer is, it is becoming clear that the path to normal twenty-something relations invariably travels through a brewery.

So like I had done many times before, I told myself, “Self, it’s time to man up. You’ve got to learn to drink beer again. Your future depends on it!”

I stopped by Publix on the way home and bought a six pack of Killian’s Irish Red. I now realize that this was probably a poor choice for a new beginner. Regardless, I proceeded home, whipped up some dinner, and cracked open a longneck.

I took two sips.

Now there are now five beer bottles sitting in the fridge, wondering where their brother has gone and waiting for my father to get home so they can join him. I only hope my special condition isn’t too detrimental in my social life during the next two years.

Remember when CNN Headline News was, you know, actually a news show? Now, HLN has devolved into a hodgepodge of superficial news and uneducated opinions. Any given half hour of programming consists of about 20 percent news and 80 percent Twitter whoring. Look, I understand that it’s chic to employ social networking on the tube nowadays, but when your show is focused more on what Ethel May in Alabama thinks about building some mosque in New York rather than actually building the mosque in New York, I think your priorities are a bit backward.

The campus is nestled mere blocks from the hallowed halls of Tropicana Field with a quaint view of Bayboro Harbor and buildings that seem younger than I am, which is always nice when you consider that such edifices are more likely to have clean bathrooms. Also, their Chick-fil-A is on the waterfront, which I think is the perfect way to enjoy overpriced (but admittedly delicious) chicken.

But the best part? YOU SHOULD FEEL THE AIR CONDITIONING. I’m not kidding. I walked across 6th Avenue South after my appointment with human resources so I could scope out the building where most of my classes will be, and I’m pretty sure I somehow fell asleep and entered into that dream from Inception with all the snow. Trust me, after parading around in my avian disguise for the amusement of strangers in temperatures above one hundred degrees day in and day out, the frigid respite of the Peter R. Wallace Florida Center for Teachers is quite a welcome surprise.

In an unrelated matter, I’m pretty sure the hardest part about adjusting to J-school will be only using one space between sentences.

No, the question mark was not a typo.

After four years of learning the ins and outs of politics and not caring much one way or the other about the topic except to point out the faults of everyone involved, I’m going in an entirely different – and equally low paying – direction.

While the prospect of living at home with Mom’s free cooking is appealing, I am going to miss Gainesville. It’s not that I did any particularly noteworthy stuff while I was here (except for the time we convinced Angus to bathe in beer), but I’m a creature of habit who shies away from any uncertainty. And even though I couldn’t point it out to you on a weather map, Alachua County is my home.

Also, I’m not really sure why they accepted me. I Facebook stalked some of my classmates-to-be (with full knowledge that if they read this when I’m in school with them that they will be sufficiently creeped out), and these people have experience. I’m not talking about managing some scholastic press association, either. They interview, they write, they code, they edit, they fly through the air with the greatest of journalistic ease. They have experience.

Whatever, though. Experience or no, here I come. And I will work my ass off.

http://twitter.com/IfIWereCommish

Casey: i got diarrhea and xmas treed it

Daniel: So you had a more positive experience than me?

My father took me to this place months ago. He was born in the town, only a couple of miles down the two lane road. I had never been to this town before, and I had never known the relatives I was visiting in that cemetery. But one thing stood out to me above all others as we wandered around looking at people that we never knew but with whom we probably share some genes. This was the calmest place I have ever seen.

I know that all cemeteries are meant to be calm, but it is impossible to find such tranquility in the city. In the city, the daily activity that surrounds any place intended for quiet and reflection is bound to seep in. But in this place, the only possible distraction might be a sluggish tractor chugging up the two lane road. More often than not, however, the only sound you hear is the wind among the stalks of corn. This is the ultimate calm, and this is where I want to be buried.