I am sitting in a crowded computer lab on the third floor of the Humanities building.  To either side of me people are frantically typing away, probably finishing term papers for their domestic diversity requirement, or some such.  There is an air of frantic desperation about this place and always has been.

            After all, this is where college students go to die.

            Not literally, of course, this place is far too sterile and inhospitable for that.  This is merely the place where most college students find themselves when they ask those awful questions:  What am I here for?  What can I possibly do with my education?  Where do I go from here?

            My roommates are experiencing this phenomenon as we speak, and yet, there is nothing that can be done for them.  I mean, what do you say?  ‘I’m sorry that you are seem destined to end up as a salesclerk in debt for the remainder of your natural life?’  There is nothing you can say, and everybody knows.  No one knows the future, and any attempts to predict it inevitably end up in disappointing failure.

            I woke up from a dream last week with one thing in mind, that I was going to live in New Orleans some day after graduation.  No set time, no set date--just me and the French Quarter.  I don’t know why I decided this, but it just seemed so right that I can’t be wrong.

            I mentioned this to a few of my friends.  Their responses were terrifyingly unanimous as they told me how much of a bad idea this was.

            But why precisely?

            Because it would screw up my life.  Because living for the rest of my life in a place I’ve never been to is the stupidest idea ever.  Because because because…

            I never said forever.

            I never said, but they assumed that because they were having issues with their own futures that mine was as boxed in as their own  There it is, my most significant accomplishment.  Ignoring the other things, my ability to remain optimistic is the one that I feel is most beneficial to me now, and will remain my greatest asset well into the future.

            Because I don’t smell the frustration of this computer lab.  I smell something distant and vaguely beautiful.  I smell New Orleans.