Skip your lectures next week and go to your real classes

Leave Chem 1800 now. Let sleeping cadavers lie in Med Sci, leave Socrates and his methods to hemlock in the Law Quad, public opinion beckons all poli sci majors. To the psych majors, yes I'm nuts, come study me. Art students, leave empty canvasses. Engineers, tear yourself from monitors and let the North Campus bell tower toll for no one. Give me the Golden Apple now, because I will give the greatest lecture ever.

There is no joy in Organic Chemistry. This is my lecture. Now leave. Yes, go I said.

Go to the places you long for most, to the places you have set aside beyond books and exams. Go to the Arb and swim in the Huron River. May your cups overfill and your conversations bubble in the smoky halls of Scorekeepers and Mitch's. Go to your dorm rooms, watch movies, do illicit drugs, drive your RAs nuts. Sleep in the booths of Denny's and on the tables in the Fleetwood, and do not despair if they are out of Moons Over My Hammy. Raid Taco Bell and give out free gorditas to all who pass by. Throw manic raves in off campus apartments. Go to your lovers and lie in their beds until dusty beams of morning light smile upon your embraces. Dream of poetry and write of nightmares. Become characters in great novels and leave the limits of life to your imagination.

Keep your New York Times in a pile on the doorstep. Speak of Kosovo, racism, Bill Clinton and AIDS in living rooms amongst your closest friends throughout the night. Solve the biological warfare question with your best friend over 24 hours of Mario Kart. Burn resumes, report cards and parking tickets in the Diag like mad Germans. Take sidewalk chalk and tag the campus with your most outrageous thoughts, breaking down the barbed wire fence between what you really think and what you say.

Strap on rollerblades and fly free through Ann Arbor at 3 a.m. with nothing but the glare of city lights to guide you. Explore the tops of parking structures and burn among the stars. Pick up instruments and give concerts in the state street corridors. Empty your pockets and share your minds with the homeless on South U.

Sip shakes and drink of the minds of people you have never met in the back of the Brown Jug. Take a camcorder and film the Dionysian revel this will be. Meet your professors for the first time as people. Dream of the Bastille, Prague or Paris and call your friends studying abroad. Tell them what they are missing out on. Run the naked mile early. Prance around Palmer field in pick-up games of soccer, tennis and volleyball. Do what you would not otherwise do if you were bound by classes, work, research or teaching. Spend the next weekend over cups of mocha at Espresso and revisit what you have learned.

On Sunday we will hold a commencement, beach balls, mortar boards and all. You will be awarded the honorary P.hD in life and everyone will be a valedictorian. You can all give speeches if you want. We'll bring in James Earl Jones dressed up as Darth Vader to give the keynote.

Finally, on Monday return to the real world and be bound again in exams, books, work, stress, ambition and failure, but return committed, and refreshed, to whatever it is you do out there in Ann Arbor and work with ease the next five weeks, because for one week you were finally alive. Think of this week as a spring break in Ann Arbor with no limitations. Do not think of it as a dream, diversion, or an unrealistic possibility, because this was the week we did the things which were most important to us. This was the week where social conventions took a backseat to family, friends, passions and exploration. This was the week that should always be.

- Mike Nagrant (mjnagran@umich.edu) would like to thank the following for teaching him how everything should be: Mom, Dad, Logsdon, Eames, Jared, Scott, Tamatha, Sonders, Mattei, Nick, Apt. 10, 19, Jerbear, Gibbs, King, Tocco, Brad, A.D., Srinu, Shoe, Ben H, Ben L, Chandan, Rahul, Josh F, Jen, Lisa, Ohm, Jim, Senehal, Gregg, Freeman, Savic, Natalie, Morgan, Friedrichs, The Stella Bros, Forster, Tomlin, Boyer and anyone who ever wrote for the Independent, Review, or Daily. Trent, Bram, Chopps, Colouris, D. Caroline, Kolkman, Probir, Joecool, Reich, Page, Andy Shotwell, Whirling Road and Getaway, Kovacik, Geeta, Schor, Wright, Miller, Bret and Liz McIntosh, Port, Mayk, Josh White, Greg Parker, Plona, Kamins, Flint and Sam, Goodison, Amrine, Caulfield, Coppola, LeeC, Cantor, Royster, Frank C., old S.P., MSA, Cajones crew, Jeff K. and Dave W. for the column, Brandemihl, Dave Engel, AQB, C. Larson, Anitha, Ang, Brig, Jen Len, Raj, Jyoti, C. Spenser, Mary G., Jenny M., Tina G., Candelas, Andres, The Brears and all the fishes at sea, sorry if I left you out.

Michael Nagrant Life Serial

03-25-99