BLOOM BLOOM, BABY, CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP B-BEEP BEEP

A lot of prospective students are interviewing these days, in their cute little pressed shirts and leather blazers, but what must they think of me, trying to light a cigarette and brush Cheeto crumbs off of my black hooded sweatshirt? I would like to pull them aside and say: "The black hooded sweatshirt is the uniform of the damned. I hope you get into this school, I think you will like it, but I also hope you are comfortable with third-day hair and caffeine headaches, because my life is your future. And by the time you are brushing Cheeto crumbs off of yourself on a Sunday afternoon between writing papers and then writing more of them, I will be a career girl living in a cheaper place in Bloomfield, a neighborhood you won't even know to visit until you're a sophomore, and I will spend my time watching my money pile up and going to shows and driving my car and getting real haircuts, like the kind you pay for. I won't be working on Sunday, unless I'm working on the crossword puzzle in my jammies or copying my zine at the library. I will have, in other words, graduated and grown up. But take a good look, sweet thing, because four years of this are headed your way." You know, I really should have said something.