Beacon 3.1

Greetings from The University of Tennessee at Knoxville Daily Beacon Op-Ed Page! If you’re reading this, that means you are either A: An accepted freshman! B: A rejected applicant here to stalk the aforementioned accepted freshmen! C: A returning student here to stalk the accepted freshmen and rejected applicants! or D: Literate! (reader must select only one category)

Unfortunately, I am disappointed to inform you that this column pertains to those in group A. Future columns will most assuredly address the needs, concerns, and darkly perverse cravings of the rest of the student body, whereas those considering themselves “literate” are more than welcome to move on to the crossword on the next page (I hear there’s a zany lepidopterist pun for 26-down that’ll fill many an erudite with more than a little self-satisfied bemusement!).

At any rate, now that we’ve “culled the crap,” as it were, I’d like to congratulate you on this new and exciting opportunity! For the next (I’ll be generously delusional and say “four”) years, you’ll get to experience the many infuriating nuances and disappointingly mediocre fruits that our grand institution has to offer. But I’m sure you want to know just what you’re in for, so let’s tell them what they’ve won!

- A labyrinthine bureaucracy that, as you forever assault its palisades of pernicious paperwork and byzantine bastions of bylaws, swallows not only your corporeal body but your increasingly despairing soul.

- A plethora of credentialed professors always willing to go that extra mile it takes to ensure you won’t be able to follow them home. These individuals will enlighten you with all manner of pedantic gems in the vein of arcane trivia, preparing you not only for dominance in “Trivial Pursuit: 14^th Century Popular Culture” (that’s a black plague joke, btw) but also that Starbucks managerial position you’ve always wished you were even more overqualified to hold.

- A variety of sports teams guaranteed to never disappoint (as long as disappointment is your only expectation). Watch as team members are deified by legions of Volunteer faithful, only to be systematically excoriated in a matter of months! Never has the destruction of so much hope been so very profitable (at least until November 4^th).

- Thousands of peers full of dreams, naiveté, and just an itsy bitsy teensy bit of alcohol, all ready to expand, grow, and change the world. What more do these peers have to offer? Well, how does gradual disillusionment coinciding with cynical pragmatism and the incessant grinding of all one’s hopes into a grainy powder of passionless, middle class contentment sound? If you said, “It sounds like a lot of silly words that mean ‘despite my best efforts, I’m still going to turn into my parents’” then you’re probably already enroute to the complimentary psychological services of The Student Counseling Center!

- A couple of sardonic cynics who exaggerate arguable flaws in a well-intentioned but often frustrating university for the primary purposes of wordstuff consolidation and raining on metaphorical parades (quite frankly, we’re just doing our part to fight the drought; we’re patriots, damn it!).

But that’s not all! If you play your cards right, you might also get:

-Syphilis! -Pregnant! -A Hobo Ear Trophy Necklage of your own construction! – Your first B! - Your second B! - B’s seven through eighteen! - An English Major (cardboard box still included)! –A Business Major (job still included)! – Drunk! -Pantsless! –Laid! -Syphilis Again! – A tad inconvenienced by the parking! – And so much more!

By now, I’m sure you’re just as excited as I have been every single moment throughout my tenure here inside the stately walls of old UT. Of course, I can’t cover all of the many things you’ll experience in college, but I certainly hope to elaborate in future (heavily censored) columns.

But again, welcome to UTK! It'll be good times. True story. All you have to do is remember that college is just like Social Security: you are absolutely guaranteed to get what you put into it. As true today as it ever was before...