When an editor informed me I would be writing an article entitled “How it feels to graduate,” I wondered how I could escape indulging in the usual clichés.  So while it might be difficult for me to describe how I might feel for an event yet to come, getting that diploma on Dec. 19 will mean more to me than I can let on.To understand the wave of emotions, a little background is in order.I began college in Nigeria two months before 9/11 with hopes of becoming a mechanical engineer. Petroleum is the biggest commodity in the country, so I naturally had aspirations to work at an oil company. These plans were dropped when I moved to the United States after three years of college.I landed in Memphis by January 2004 where I spent several months before relocating to Baton Rouge in August. The move was a rude shock.First of all, I knew no one in the city and arrived at night on a game day which meant I had to find lodging in Port Allen. My first distinct sense of alienation hit — I was now a stranger in a strange land.For a moment I wondered if I had made the right choice.And Baton Rouge isn’t the prettiest city I have seen — not by a long shot.This was not the city I imagined living in. When I watched the LSU Tigers defeat the Oklahoma Sooners in January 2004, I didn’t realize I might have substituted Baton Rouge’s rusticity with New Orleans’ elegance. It’s only later on I realized Baton Rouge was that homely high school classmate with an acne-riddled face and a heart of gold.The main goal I had in coming to the United States was to become a journalist. I had read Howard Cosell’s “I Never Played That Game,” watched Walter Cronkite’s Vietnam series and I became fascinated with the news business. So although I was a mechanical engineering major at LSU, my attention was increasingly taken by journalism.Be not deceived if from the description above, my academic journey appears smooth — it was an obstacle course that produced more wrecks than a Jimmie Johnson mêlée; an academic golf course inundated with well-disguised sand traps. The reason I refuse to dwell on those stutters is for the same reason a Tour de France winner doesn’t dwell on the torturous ascent of the Pyrenees — the exertions seem trivial compared to the reward.All these years in school have convinced me the college educational system is an advanced printing press where a pack of impressionable ingots are molded into indistinguishable human specimens.What a travesty.College is not the time to confine oneself to the established curriculum; rather it is a chance to expand one’s intellectual horizons by taking classes from other departments and colleges. The point is not to sit down and be taught; it is to move around and learn what’s all around you.Studying at LSU is an opportunity to visit Middleton Library, the concrete-and-glass monstrosity installed in the middle of the Quad, and hold discussions with the bearded sages who inhabit the musty tomes on the fourth floor.Looking back over my three years here, I don’t know if I have influenced anyone at LSU, but I do know several people, especially teachers, have impressed me. There is the professor, whose pithy dictum “Look for the theory?” introduced me to political science.There’s another, whose explanation of Kant’s categorical imperative convinced me to become an academic. There is the mass communication professor whose harsh judgment that “Touch of Evil” is better than “Citizen Kane” instigated my love for the cinema and unleashed those coldhearted columns you’ve come to relish on Fridays.For me the joy of graduating lies not in my finishing undergraduate studies but in my beginning a new chapter in my life. Indeed, what does it profit a man, if he gets his degree, but then gets swept along with the multitude, living from 9-to-5, wondering where the better part of his life was spent?So another journey begins, as the present one ends.Following my undergraduate studies, I plan on going to graduate school to research on what alternatives are capable of replacing the ubiquitous democratic model of government. In this egalitarian milieu where man’s basic equality is held sacrosanct, is it possible to have a government that provides equity among citizens; and if there isn’t, could a viable alternative form of government be found by rummaging through the rubbles of classical antiquity?Regardless of where I continue my graduate education, LSU always be home to me. Thanks for all the happy memories.Geaux Tigers.—-Contact Freke Ette at [email protected]