It's not been an easy four years at The Ohio State University, with doubt and worry stealing precious hours of sleep and eating an increasingly large wound in the lining of my stomach. These times are not the same as those of afternoon recesses and snow days.
As graduation nears, I find myself stopping and trying to adjust the focus of the shaking, panoramic view that is my perspective. The majority of difficulty persisting in my life is from trying to place all the necessary objects of a successful existence into this narrow frame without zooming out so far as to lose the vivid aspects of those objects that give life its intrinsic value.
However, when one has teetered his or her way this far - in a world where an illness, no matter debilitating, doesn't warrant a make-up exam or an extension on a paper without "proper documentation" - the civility of life has already been blurred.
I copy edit for The Lantern, and I've had to read stories about some quitters of this institution taking their own lives. It reminded me of when I was a freshman during the 2000-2001 university year. That year there was a string of suicides, complete with a gunman holding a pistol out of a dorm window.
As many will probably agree, freshman year was not easy. I left everything behind in the safe, isolated town of DeGraff - extracted from my Momma, my two beagle puppies and all my friends - and I was transplanted into the intimidating university we've all come to love.
Making friends wasn't easy, classes were hard and eating something other than my mother's home cooking was torture. There were all-nighters devoted to writing papers and studying for tests - something I wasn't familiar with in my school where I never cracked a book, played football and baseball, worked 35 hours a week and still graduated valedictorian.
Loneliness and the gaping hole in my heart resulting from abandoning my Momma broke me down. Having problems adapting and quickly losing sight of my reason for being at OSU, my situation probably wasn't much better than those who gave up.
But sitting on a dirty bathroom floor in Steeb Hall - contemplating whether to break the mirror and use the shards to slit my wrists or to go study for my philosophy exam - I had my epiphany.
Be it divine intervention or sleep deprivation mixed with taking a few too many antidepressants, I had my sustaining vision - the grandiose illusion of what I was working towards.
I flashed back to the happiest moments of my young, meaningless life. I was sitting on my porch on a warm summer evening with my mother. I recalled her smiling and tears rolling down her cheek when I told her I was going to take care of her.
It became as obvious as basketball coach Gene Keady's toupee; I needed to stand up, prepare for my final, get a degree and repay my mother for all of her sacrifices.
I didn't sleep that night, and as I walked into my final, I remembered the countless mornings I heard my mother's alarm going off at 4 a.m. so she could get up and go to work to put clothes on my back and food on the table. It fully occurred to me how important it is to persevere through the struggles presented by college so I could attain my dreams, fulfill the promises I had made and hopefully do a job half as good as the one my mother did raising me.
But to present myself as nothing short of stoic and to offer help to anyone lacking the fortitude necessary to complete the daunting task of obtaining a degree, I challenge everyone - including myself - to embody the description once given to Julius Caesar: "For himself he wanted a high command, an army and a war in some field where his gifts could shine in all their brightness."
I'm nominating myself as captain of the team and this is my half-time speech. This time and experience known as college is our own individual "war" where each of our gifts can shine. But without the proper sacrifice, the sleepless nights, the endurance through illness and the demoralizing uncertainty, our war will appear in history as meaningless and fruitless as Operation Iraqi Freedom.
So, for those in the same predicament I am - was in, I want to point out how amazingly analogous the acceptance to college is to Julius Caesar's 2,053-year-old decision to cross the small Italian stream called the Rubicon. Caesar's words, appropriate enough, ring true to this day: "We may still draw back but once across that little bridge, we shall have to fight it out."
G.W. Moore is a senior in journalism and mass communication. He can be reached for comment at moore.1201@osu.edu.
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