This is my last column as The Daily Reveille’s opinion editor. I have loved this job as I never have any other, save, perhaps, my teenage job mowing lawns. I know there has never been one that has been more rewarding, frustrating, interesting or stimulating. It has been my own university, in which I have begun to learn the craft of journalism and improved my own writing style.
Now that I am departing from this position, I will continue to write for this paper at the pleasure of my editor until I graduate. I am forced to consider what exactly I have learned here and how it has affected me as both a writer and as a man. I believe self-reflection is necessary in life, yet in print is rarely needed. Yet as I have shared my opinions with you for the past three years, I find it only fitting to give you a glimpse into my mind and how I have evolved.
I started my tenure at this University much as my friend and colleague Dennis Mitchell did his, albeit in a slightly different manner. My politics were much more conservative than his, though I was never much of a fan of Bush. I was more religious, though I had less honest faith than I do now. I also had not gathered the body of knowledge, both of learning and of myself, that I have gained through four years of study and experience. To sum it up, I was an X-Box-playing nerd and a romantic. I haven’t touched an X-Box in years, and the last romantic thought I had involved an essay on Byron.
Working at a newspaper helped me dispel, rather quickly, the notion that people were good, any faith in the “masses” and any real hope of remaking the world into any remote state of perfection. After three years of writing quasi-professionally, I’ve come to two conclusions. The world is a bitter, nasty place and is not growing any better, and I want to write until my heart stops beating.
With regard to the former, I say this as a young man who grew up in a well-off loving household. Outside of our homes and families, however, if they aren’t broken or strife-filled themselves, the world is a brutal place. The evolutionary system weeds out those who are unable or unwilling to survive. That’s just the way it is, folks, and if civilization or religion try to mitigate it, well, good for them.
I have grown disgusted, even more than I once was, with those who trot out cure-alls, mostly done for the “benefit of the people.” These folks, those who think that they can legislate to cure people of being fat, smoking, drinking too much, drug use, gambling or, God save us, a crippingly soda addiction, are simply not existing in reality. I oppose all restrictions on personal behavior that harm no one. I don’t care if you want to hire a hooker after smoking pot and then have him perform a sex act on you while you gamble online, eat a Butterfinger and pour absinthe. It simply means nothing to me, and I see no reason why the government has any right to tell you what you do to your body as long as you’re not harming anyone.
Still, what do you expect from the same people who invade third-world countries that have been under sanctions for over a decade whose only weapons of mass destruction are people who blow themselves up? Not so much, I’d guess.
So where does that leave me? I’m looking for work and involved with my own projects. I am left, however, with one overwhelming desire and goal: to, as Beethoven once wrote, seize life by its throat. I don’t have that great man’s talent, but I, as well as everyone reading this, have their own. Anyone who complains about the lack of opportunity in this world is a lying son of a bitch. We need only to work.
So we move on. Some of you, including most of my closest friends, are moving on to the post graduate and the world. Others of us will stay here or drop out. I’ve learned to write here better than I could elsewhere, but I believe my education is finished. I’ll get my degree, but for me it will be a sheet of paper, useful for jobs, but of little but sentimental value for me.
My education has been in the field and in life. I’ve learned from books and professors, but life has taught me more.
 
Ryan is a history senior. Contact him
at [email protected]